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THE   HUMAN   BOY 


BY 


EDEN    PHILLPOTTS 

AUTHOR    OF    "CHILDREN    OF    THE    MIST 
"FOLLY    AND    FRESH    AIR "    ETC. 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW   YORK   AND   LONDON 

I9OO 


,V0  fa/ 


TO 

PHILLPOTTS  "MINOR" 

AS  A  TRIFLING  TRIBUTE  OF  FRATERNAL  REGARD 
AND  IN  GREEN  AND  GRATEFUL  MEMORY  OF 

OUR  HAPPY  BOYHOOD 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Artfulness  op  Steggles 1 

The  Protest  op  the  Wing  Dormitory    .    .    23 

"  Freckles  "  and  "Frenchy" 47 

Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 69 

The  Piebald  Rat 94 

Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 115 

Gideon's  Front  Tooth 133 

The  Chemistry  Class 150 

Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 171 

Morr ant's  Half- So v 202 

The  Buckeneers 226 


The  Human  Boy 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 


I  REMEMBER  the  very  evening  he  came 
to  Merivale.  "Nubby"  Tomkins  had 
a  cold  on  his  chest,  so  Mathers  and  I 
stopped  in  from  the  half-hour  "  kick-about" 
in  the  playground  before  tea,  being  chums 
of  Nubby's.  Whenever  he  gets  a  cold  on 
the  chest  he  thinks  he  is  going  to  die, 
and  this  evening,  sitting  by  the  fire  in  the 
Fifth's  class-room,  he  roasted  chestnuts  for 
Mathers  and  me,  and  took  a  very  gloomy 
view  of  his  future  life. 

"As  you  know,"  he  said,  "I  hate  being 
out  of  doors  excepting  when  I  can  lie  about 
in  hay.  And  to  make  me  go  out  walking 
in  all  weathers,  as  they  do  here,  is  sim- 
ply murder.  I  know  what  '11  be  the  end  of 
it.     I  shall  get  bacilluses  or  microbes  into 

A  1 


The  Human  Boy 

some  important  part  of  me,  and  die.  It's 
like  those  books  the  Doctor  reads  to  the 
kids  on  Sundays,  with  choir-boys  in  them. 
The  little  brutes  sing  like  angels,  and  their 
voices  go  echoing  to  the  top  of  cathedrals, 
and  make  people  blub  about  in  the  pews. 
Then  they  get  microbes  on  the  chest,  and 
kick.  You  know  the  only  thing  I  can  do 
is  to  sing  ;  and  I  shall  die  as  sure  as  mud." 

Nubby  was  a  corker  at  singing.  He  had 
all  the  solos  in  the  chapel  to  himself,  and 
people  came  miles  to  hear  him. 

"  You  won't  die,"  said  Mathers.  "You 
don't  give  your  money  away  to  the  poor, 
or  help  blind  people  across  roads,  and  all 
that.    Your  voice '11  crack,  and  you'll  live." 

"  I  wish  it  would,"  said  Nubby;  "  I  should 
feel  a  lot  safer." 

"  Mine,"  continued  Mathers,  "  cracked 
when  my  mustache  came." 

We  looked  at  him  as  he  patted  it.  Math- 
ers was  going  next  term.  He  had  more 
mustache  than,  at  least,  two  of  the  under- 
masters,  and  once  he  let  Nubby  stroke  it, 
and  Nubby  said  he  could  feel  it  distinctly 
under  the  hand. 

2 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

"That's  what's  done  it  with  M.,"  said 
Nubby,  looking  at  Mathers  and  opening  an- 
other gloomy  subject. 

Mathers  got  redder,  and  began  peeling  a 
chestnut. 

<(  I  wish  I  was  as  certain  as  you/'  he  said. 

"None  of  us  can  be  certain/'  I  said; 
"  but  if  your  voice  did  go,  Nubbs,  you'd  be 
out  of  the  hunt  for  one." 

"  I  am,"  declared  Nubby.  "  Last  time  I 
had  a  cold  in  the  throat  she  sent  me  a  little 
bunch  of  grapes  by  Jane,  and  a  packet  of 
black  currant  lozenges ;  but  this  time, 
though  the  attack  is  on  my  chest,  and  I 
may  die,  she  hasn't  sent  a  thing." 

"Perhaps  she  doesn't  know." 

"She  does.  I  met  her  going  into  the  li- 
brary yesterday,  and  I  doubled  up  and 
barked  like  a  dog,  and  she  never  even  said 
she  was  sorry.  It  lies  between  you  two 
chaps  now." 

"I  believe  you  are  going  strongest  just 
at  present,"  said  Mathers,  critically,  to  me. 
"  You  came  off  last  Wednesday  and  kicked 
two  goals  on  your  own,  and  she  said  after- 
wards to  Browne  that  she  never  saw  you 


The  Human  Boy 

play  a  bigger  game.  Then  that  little  beast 
— Browne,  I  mean  —  sniggered,  and  made 
that  noise  in  his  throat,  like  a  sprnng  bat, 
and  said  he  was  quite  glad  he  hadn't  kept 
you  in.  That's  how  he  shows  M.  what  a 
gnlf  there  is  even  between  the  Fifth  and 
masters." 

"  The  bigger  the  gulf  the  better,"  I  said. 
"  It  would  be  rough  on  a  decent  worm  to 
put  it  second  to  Browne.  In  my  opinion 
even  a  Double-First  would  be  nothing  if  he 
wore  salmon-colored  ties  and  elastic -sided 
boots ;  and  Browne  isn't  a  Double-First  by 
long  chalks.  He  can  only  teach  the  kids, 
and  his  desk  is  well  known  to  be  crammed 
with  cribs  of  every  kind." 

In  the  matter  of  M.,  I  may  say  at  once  that 
she  was  Milly,  Doctor  Denham's  youngest 
daughter — twelve  and  a  half,  fair,  blue  eyes, 
and  jolly  difficult  to  please.  Somehow  the 
Fifth  always  drew  her  most.  The  Sixth  were 
feeble  beggars  at  that  time.  Two  of  the  ten 
wore  spectacles,  and  one  was  going  out  to 
Africa  as  a  missionary,  and  used  to  treat  the 
Fifth's  class-room  as  a  sort  of  training-ground 
for  preaching  and  doing  good.  He  was  called 
4  " 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

Fulcher,  and  the  spirit  was  willing  in  him, 
but  the  flesh  was  flabby.  We  used  to  assegai 
him  with  stumps,  and  pretend  to  scalp  him 
and  boil  him  and  eat  him.  He  said  he  should 
glory  in  martyrdom  really  ;  and  Nubbs,  who 
knows  a  good  deal  about  eating,  used  to  write 
recipes  for  cooking  Fulcher,  and  post  them 
to  imaginary  African  kings.  But  I  should 
think  that  to  be  merely  eaten  is  not  martyr- 
dom, properly  speaking.  If  it  is,  then  every- 
thing we  eat,  down  to  periwinkles,  must  be 
martyrs;  which  is  absurd,  like  Euclid  says. 
Well,  it  got  to  be  a  settled  idea  at  Meri- 
vale  that  M.  cared,  in  a  sort  of  vague  way, 
for  either  Nubby,  or  Mathers,  or  me,  or  all 
of  us.  The  situation  was  too  uncertain  for 
anything  like  real  jealousy  among  us ;  be- 
sides, we  were  chums,  and  had  no  objection 
to  going  shares  in  M.'s  regard.  At  foot- 
ball Mathers  and  I  fought  like  demons  for 
Merivale  and  for  M/s  good  word ;  but  any 
impression  we  might  make  was  generally 
swept  away  in  chapel  by  Nubby  when  Sun- 
day came.  He  could  sing,  mind  you.  It 
was  like  cold  water  down  your  spine,  and  all 
from  printed  music.  Besides,  he  could  be 
5 


The  Human  Boy 

ill,  which  gave  him  a  pull  over  Mathers  and 
me,  who  couldn't.  To  look  at,  Nubby  was 
nothing.  He  had  big  limbs,  but  they  were 
soft  as  sausages.  If  you  punched  him  he 
didn't  bruise  yellow  and  afterwards  black, 
but  merely  turned  red  and  then  white  again. 
Mathers,  besides  being  captain  of  the  First 
Footer  eleven,  had  nigger  hair,  that  girls 
always  go  dotty  about,  and  black  eyes,  and 
pretty  nearly  as  much  mustache  as  eyebrow. 
As  for  me,  my  biceps  were  the  biggest  in  the 
lower  school,  which  isn't  much,  of  course  ; 
but  things  like  that  tell  with  a  girl. 

Then  it  was  that  conversation  turned  on 
Steggles.  He  was  a  new  boy,  due  that  after- 
noon. Hardly  had  the  name  passed  my  lips 
when  the  door  opened,  and  the  Doctor's  head 
appeared.  The  next  moment  a  chap  follow- 
ed him. 

"Ah  !  there  are  some  of  the  fellows  by 
the  fire,"  said  the  Doctor.  "Is  that  you, 
Tomkins  ?    But  I  needn't  ask." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Nubby,  rising. 

"You  are  ill-advised,  Tomkins,  to  spend 
the  greater  part  of  your  leisure  sitting,  as 
you  do,  almost  upon  the  hob.  A  constitu- 
6 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

tional  weakness  is  thereby  increased.  This 
is  Steggles.  You  will  have  time  for  a  little 
conversation  before  tea." 

The  Doctor  disappeared,  and  Steggles 
came  slowly  down  the  room  with  his  hands 
in  his  pockets.  There  was  nothing  to  indi- 
cate a  new  boy  about  him.  He  had  red  rims 
to  his  eyes  and  a  spot  or  two  on  his  face, 
chiefly  near  his  nose  and  on  his  forehead ; 
his  hair  was  sandy,  and  he  wore  a  gold  watch- 
chain. 

"You're  called  Steggles,  aren't  you?" 
said  Nubby,  who  was  an  awfully  civil  chap 
in  his  manners. 

"lam." 

"Well,  I  hope  you'll  like  Merivale." 

"Do  you?" 

"All  right  in  summer-time  when  there's 
hay.    Hate  it  when  I'm  ill,  which  I  am  now." 

"  What  can  you  do  ?"  asked  Mathers  in 
his  abrupt  way. 

"I  can  draw," said  Steggles. 

"What?" 

"  Devils." 

"Do  one,"  said  Mathers. 

He  got  a  piece  of  Cambridge  demi  and  a 
7 


The  Human  Boy 

pen  and  ink.  Then  Steggles,  evidently  anx- 
ious to  please,  sat  down,  and  did  as  good  a 
devil  as  ever  I  saw.  Nubby  and  I  were 
greatly  pleased. 

"  What  else  can  yon  do  ?"  said  Mathers, 
as  if  such  a  power  to  draw  devils  wasn't  as 
much  as  you  conld  expect  from  one  chap. 

"I  can  smoke." 

"  Cigarettes  ?     So  can  anybody." 

"No ;  a  pipe." 

"  Oh  !  where  did  yon  learn  that  ?" 

"At  Harrow." 

Then  Steggles  started  like  a  gnilty  thing 
and  put  his  hand  over  his  month — too  late. 
A  rumor  we  had  heard  was  proved  true. 

"It  would  have  been  sure  to  get  out,  and 
I  don't  care  who  knows  it,  for  that  matter," 
said  Steggles,  defiantly.  "I  had  to  leave 
there  because  I  didn't  know  enough,  and 
couldn't  get  up  higher  in  the  school.  I'm 
rather  backward  through  not  being  properly 
taught.  The  teaching  at  Harrow  's  simply 
cruel.  Not  but  what  I've  taught  myself  a 
thing  or  two,  mind  you.     I'm  fifteen." 

He  looked  at  us  out  of  his  red-rimmed 
eyes,  and  put  me  in  mind  of  a  ferret  I've 
8 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

got  at  home.     He  might  have  been  any  age 
np  to  twenty,  I  thought. 

"  Can  you  play  anything  ?"  asked  Mathers. 

"  The  piano." 

Mathers  shivered  and  Nubby  grew  excited. 

"  So  can  I.     We'll  do  duets,"  he  said. 

"If  you  like,"  said  Steggles. 

Then  the  tea-bell  rang. 


II 


Whole  books  might  be  written  about 
Steggles  at  Merivale.  I  heard  Thompson 
say,  after  he  had  been  there  a  week,  that  it 
wasn't  what  he  didn't  know  had  rendered 
it  necessary  for  Steggles  to  leave  Harrow, 
but  what  he  did  know.  Certainly  he  had 
a  great  deal  of  general  information  about 
rum  things.  He  got  newspapers  by  post 
concerning  sporting  matters ;  he  knew  an 
immense  deal  about  dogs  and  horses;  and 
Nubbs,  who  was  a  judge,  said  his  piano- 
playing  surpassed  his  devil-drawing  for  sheer 
brilliance.  Yet,  with  all  these  accomplish- 
ments, he  only  managed  to  get  into  the 
9 


The  Human  Boy- 
Fourth.  As  to  his  smoking,  it  was  certainly 
wonderful.  And  he  ate  things  afterwards 
to  hide  the  smell.  He  had  a  genius  for 
wriggling  out  of  rows  and  for  getting  them 
up  between  other  fellows.  He  loved  to  look 
on  at  fighting  and  knew  all  the  proper  rules. 
On  the  whole  he  was  rather  a  beast,  and,  if 
it  hadn't  been  for  Nubby,  Mathers  and  I 
should  have  barred  him.  But  all  Fin  going 
to  tell  about  now  is  the  hideous  discovery 
of  Steggles  and  M.,  and  the  thing  that  hap- 
pened on  the  day  of  the  match  with  Buckland 
Grammar  School. 

M.  had  been  very  queer  for  a  fortnight — 
queer,  I  mean,  with  all  three  of  us — which 
was  unusual.  Then,  seeing  how  the  cat  had 
taken  to  jumping,  I  tackled  her  one  morn- 
ing going  through  the  hall  to  the  Doctor's 
study. 

"  How  d'  you  like  Steggles  ?"  I  said. 

"  Very  well.     He's  clever,"  she  said. 

"  He's  fifteen,"  I  said  ;  "  he  ought  to 
know  something  if  he's  ever  going  to.  He's 
only  in  the  Fourth,  anyway." 

"You're  jealous  and  so  is  Mathers,"  she 

said. 

10 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

"  Jealous  of  a  chap  with  ferret-eyes  !  Not 
likely,"  I  said. 

"You  are,  though." 

"Not  more  thanNubbs  and  Mathers,  any- 
way/' I  said.  "  It's  off  with  the  old  friends 
and  on  with  the  new,  I  suppose." 

"  Steggles  knows  how  to  treat  a  girl.  You 
might  learn  manners  from  him,  and  so  might 
the  others,"  she  said. 

"  And  also  the  piano,  perhaps  ?" 

"He  plays  beautifully." 

"  Have  you  seen  him  play  football  ?" 

"  No." 

"Lucky  for  you." 

"Football  isn't  everything." 

"  No,  not  since  he  came ;  I've  noticed  that. " 

This  bitter  speech  stung  M.,  and  her  eyes 
jolly  well  flashed  sparks. 

"  Nor  singing  either,"  I  went  on.  "Nubbs 
nearly  burst  himself  last  Sunday  in  chapel; 
and  all  the  time  you  were  watching  Steggles 
making  a  rabbit  with  his  pocket  -  handker- 
chief." 

"  I'll  thank  you  not  to  interest  yourself  in 
me  any  more,"  she  said,  "  either  in  chapel 
or  out  of  it." 

11 


The  Human  Boy 

"  All  right.  I  dare  say  I  shall  still  live/' 
I  said.  "  Does  that  remark  apply  equally 
to  Mathers  and  Nubby,  or  only  to  me  ?" 

"  To  Mathers,  yes,"  she  said.  "  He's  as 
bad  as  you  are.     Not  to  Nubbs." 

Then  she  went. 

Well,  there  it  stood.  When  I  told  them 
Mathers  seemed  to  think  I  needn't  have 
dragged  him  in,  and  Nubbs  got  clean  above 
himself  with  hope,  not  seeing  that  he  was 
really  just  as  much  out  of  it  as  us.  Of 
course  we  chucked  Steggles  for  good  and  all 
then,  and  told  him  what  we  thought  of  him. 
That  was  when  he  said  something  about  only 
the  brave  deserving  the  fair,  and  Mathers 
made  him  sit  down  in  a  puddle  for  cheeking 
him  in  the  playground.  Steggles's  eyes 
looked  like  one  of  his  own  devils  while  he 
sat  there,  but  he  took  it  jolly  quietly  at  the 
time.  That  got  Nubby's  wool  off  though, 
because  he  supported  Steggles,  and  things 
were,  in  fact,  rather  difficult  all  round  till 
the  day  of  the  Buckland  Grammar  School 
match.  Buckland.  was  two  miles  from  Meri- 
vale,  and  most  of  the  team  went  by  train ; 
but  Mathers  and  I,  the  day  being  fine,  de- 
12 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

cided  to  walk ;  and  at  the  last  moment  Nubbs 
asked  if  he  might  come  with  Steggles. 

Out  of  consideration  for  Nubby  we  agreed, 
and  the  four  of  us  started  on  a  fine  bright 
afternoon  just  after  dinner.  Mathers  and  I 
had  our  football  things  on,  of  course ;  Nubbs 
was  dressed  in  his  usual  style,  and  Steggles, 
who  used  to  get  himself  up  tremendously 
on  half-holidays,  wore  yellow  spats  over  his 
boots,  and  a  sort  of  white  thing  under  his 
waistcoat,  and  gloves.  We  had  rather  more 
than  half  an  hour's  walk  before  us,  and  hard- 
ly were  we  out  of  sight  of  Merivale  when 
Steggles  pulled  out  his  pipe  and  lighted  it. 


Ill 


The  artfulness  of  Steggles  properly  begins 
here.  He  knew  several  things  we  didn't. 
He  knew,  for  instance,  that  M.  was  coming 
to  the  football  match,  that  she  was  going  to 
ride  her  bicycle  over  on  the  road  by  which 
we  walked,  that  only  the  day  before  he  had 
quarrelled  with  her,  and  that  his  position 
with  regard  to  her  was  at  that  hour  most 
13 


The  Human  Boy 

risky.  All  these  things  Steggles  well  knew, 
and  we  didn't.  So  he  lighted  his  pipe  with 
an  air  of  long  practice.  The  smell  was  fine, 
and  he  smacked  his  lips  now  and  then. 

"Nice  ponch  ?"  he  said,  handing  me  a 
velveteen  ponch  with  his  initials  on  it  in 
green  silk. 

"I'll  bet  a  girl  did  that/'  said  Mathers. 

"  It's  a  secret/'  said  Steggles,  smiling  to 
himself. 

Then  he  asked  very  civily  if  we  would  care 
to  join  him,  explaining  that  he  generally 
kept  a  few  spare  pipes  about  him  for  friends. 

"  I  would  if  it  wasn't  for  the  match,"  said 
Mathers. 

"So  would  I,"  I  said. 

"  Well,  my  baccy  might  turn  you  fellows 
up.  Perhaps  you  are  wise,"  declared  Steg- 
gles, puffing  away.  Then  he  tried  Nubby 
with  a  little  cherry-wood  pipe,  and  Nubbs 
thought  a  whiff  or  two  wouldn't  hurt  him 
and  began  rather  nervously,  but  gathered 
courage  as  he  went  on. 

"I  heard  my  father  say  once  that  life  with- 
out tobacco  would  be  hell,"  said  Steggles ; 
"  and  I  agree  with  him." 
14 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

"  So  do  I ;  it's  very  soothing,"  said 
Nubby. 

Then  Mathers  burst  out.  He  had  been 
sulking  ever  since  Steggles  hinted  that  the 
contents  of  his  velveteen  pouch  were  too 
strong  for  us. 

"  If  you  think  I  funk  your  tobacco  you're 
wrong/'  Mathers  said.  "  I've  smoked  three 
parts  of  a  cigar  before  to-day." 

"  A  chocolate  one,  perhaps  ?"  said  Steg- 
gles, but  in  such  a  humble,  inquiring  voice 
that  Mathers  couldn't  hit  him. 

"No,  a  tobacco  one  ;  and  if  you've  got 
another  pipe  I'll  show  you." 

"  So  will  I,"  I  chimed  in.  Mathers's  lead 
was  always  good  enough  for  me. 

Steggles  immediately  lugged  out  two  more 
pipes.     He  seemed  to  be  stuffed  with  them. 

"G-et  it  well  alight  at  the  start,"  he  ex- 
plained, handing  a  fusee. 

"All  right,  all  right,  I  know,"  said  Math- 
ers. Soon  we  were  at  it  like  four  chimneys, 
and  Steggles  praised  us  in  such  a  way  that 
we  could  take  no  offence. 

"You've  all  smoked  many  a  time  and  oft, 
I  can  see  that,"  he  said. 
15 


The  Human  Boy 

Mathers  spat  about  a  good  deal,  and  fan- 
cied tobacco  was  probably  a  fine  steadier  for 
the  nerves  before  a  football  match ;  and 
Nubbs  said  he  thought  so  too ;  and  he  also 
thought  that  after  a  little  smoking  one 
didn't  want  to  talk,  but  ought  just  to  keep 
quiet  and  think  of  interesting  things. 

"It  widens  the  mind,"  said  Steggles. 

We  tramped  on  rather  silently  for  ten 
minutes  till  Nubbs  spoke  again.  To  our 
surprise  his  hopeful  tone  had  changed,  and 
we  found  he  had  turned  a  sort  of  putty- 
color,  with  blue  lips.     He  said  : 

"Fll  overtake  you  fellows.  I  think  Fve 
got — Fve  got  a  bit  of  a  sunstroke  or  some- 
thing.    It'll  pass  off,  no  doubt." 

"Better  not  smoke  any  more,"  said  Steg- 
gles. 

"It  isn't  that,  but  I  won't,  all  the  same. 
I'll  just  dodge  through  that  hole  in  the 
hedge  and  find  some  wild  strawberries  or 
hazel-nuts,  or  something." 

Seeing  it  was  a  frosty  day  in  December 

Nubby's  statements  looked  wild.     But  he 

went.     There  was  a  hole  in  the  hedge,  with 

tree -roots   trailing   across   it,   and   Nubbs 

16 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

crawled  shakily  through,  like  a  wounded 
rabbit,  into  a  place  where  a  board  was  stuck 
up  saying  that  people  would  be  prosecuted 
according  to  law  if  they  went  there.  But 
he  didn't  seem  to  care,  though  ib  wasn't  a 
thing  he  would  have  done  in  cold  blood.  I 
saw  Mathers  grow  uneasy  in  his  mind. 

"  Wasn't  the  pipe— eh  ?" 

"No,  no.  This  tobacco  —  why,  a  child 
could  smoke  it,"  said  Steggles.  "  You  know 
what  Nubbs  is.  It's  only  an  excuse  to  turn. 
He  hates  football  and  hates  walking." 

We  kept  on  again,  and  I  began  to  feel  a 
slight  perspiration  on  my  forehead  and  a 
weird  sort  of  feeling  everywhere.  I  had 
smoked  about  half  the  pipe. 

"  I  sha'n't  go  on  with  this'now  because  of 
the  match,"  I  said,  hastily  knocking  out  the 
remaining  tobacco  and  handing  his  loath- 
some little  clay  back  to  Steggles. 

«  Why  !"  he  said,  "  blessed  if  you  haven't 
gone  the  same  color  as  Nubbs  did!  Don't 
say  you've  got  a  sunstroke  too  ?" 

There  was  something  in  the  voice  of  Steg- 
gles I  didn't  much  like,  but  I  hardly  felt 
equal  to  answering  him  then. 
b  17 


The  Human  Boy 

"You're  all  right,  anyway,  aren't  yon, 
Mathers  ?"  he  asked. 

"  Of  course  I  am.  What  the  dickens  d' 
you  mean  ?" 

"Nothing.  Glad  you  like  my  baccy. 
There's  plenty  of  time  for  another  pipe." 

"  No  there  isn't,"  said  Mathers.  "I  very 
much  wish  there  was." 

We  walked  on  a  few  yards  farther. 

"  D'  you  drink  that  rich,  brown  cod-liver 
oil,  the  same  as  Nubby  ?"  asked  Steggles  of 
Mathers,  suddenly.  Mathers  looked  at  him, 
and  I  knew  how  things  were  in  a  moment. 
For  a  moment  my  own  sufferings  were  for- 
gotten before  the  awful  spectacle  of  the  ruin 
of  Mathers.  He  gave  his  pipe  back  quietly, 
took  great  gasps  of  air,  mopped  his  forehead, 
and  rolled  his  eyes  about.     Then  he  said  : 

"  I'm  not  quite  happy  about  Nubbs.  You 
push  on,  and  I'll  overtake  you." 

"  Hanged  if  you're  not  queer  too !"  ex- 
claimed Steggles.  "Whoever  would  have 
thought  that  Three  Castles — " 

"Shut  up,"  said  Mathers,  hoarsely.  "It 
was  the  boi — boiled  beef  at  dinner." 

He  spoke  the  words  with  an  awful  effort. 
18 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

"So  it  was,"  I  said,  feebly.  "We  never 
could  stand  it — either  of  us." 

"  A  steaming  glass  of  hot  grog  is  what 
you  want,"  said  Steggles,  sympathetically. 

"  Go  !"  gasped  Mathers,  who  really  looked 
horrid  now  ;  "go  !  or  I'll  kick  you,  if  it  kills 
me  to  do  it." 

"  Blessed  if  you  haven't  turned  green, 
Mathers,"  said  Steggles.  "  You  look  as  if 
you'd  been  buried  and  dug  up  again.  I 
don't  say  it  unkindly,  but  it's  jolly  curious." 

At  the  same  moment  ting  !  ting  !  went  a 
bicycle  bell  ;  and  there  was  Milly,  looking 
fine. 

'"  You'll  all  be  late,"  she  said. 

We  prayed  she  would  hurry  on  and  not 
observe  us  too  narrowly.  Then  that  beast, 
Steggles,  made  her  stop. 

"Look  here,"  he  said,  "it's  frightfully 
serious  because  of  the  match — these  poor 
chaps  are  ill — just  cast  your  eye  at  the  colors 
they've  gone.  They  worried  me  to  let  them 
try  to  smoke,  and — " 

"  I'll  break  your  neck  for  this  !"  inter- 
rupted Mathers.     Then  he  turned  to  M. 

"  If  you're  a  lady,  if  you  ever  cared  an 
19 


The  Human  Boy 

atom  about  us,  please  ride  on  round  that 
corner.     We're  ill — can't  you  see  it  ?" 

"  Yes,  I  can — anybody  could.  I'm  sorry. 
But  you  won't  hurt  Steggles  if  I  go  ?" 
said  M.  v 

( ( No  ;  I  promise.  Say  we're  on  the  road 
and  shall  be  there  in  ten — ten —    Go  !" 

M.  took  the  hint  and  rode  off,  with  Steg- 
gles frisking  beside  her,  like  the  dog  he  was. 

"  Thank  the  Lord  !"  said  Mathers.  Then 
horrid  things  happened  both  to  him  and  me. 

We  crawled  to  the  match  more  dead  than 
alive  and  found  a  crowd  waiting,  and  Browne 
and  several  of  the  other  masters.  We  were 
fully  twenty  minutes  late.  "  This  is  very 
unsportsmanlike,  the  days  being  so  short 
too  !"  Browne  squeaked.  Then  we  took  off 
our  coats  and  tottered  into  the  field  of  play. 

Of  course  Buckland  Grammar  School  won. 
Our  side  would  have  done  a  long  way  better 
without  us.  I  couldn't  take  a  pass  or  shoot 
for  the  life  of  me — it  occupied  all  my  time 
wrestling  with  nature,  let  alone  the  Buck- 
landers.  And  Mathers,  who  played  back, 
was  worse.  The  roughs  " guyed  "  him,  and 
asked  him  what  he'd  been  drinking.  If 
20 


The  Artfulness  of  Steggles 

they'd  asked  him  what  he'd  been  smoking 
there  might  have  been  some  sense  in  it.  He 
told  me  afterwards  that  he  often  saw  three 
footballs  at  one  time  when  he  tried  to  kick, 
and  sometimes  four,  and  the  ball  he  kicked 
always  turned  out  to  be  an  apparition.  Brad- 
well  kept  goal  grandly  too ;  but  it  was  no 
good  with  Mathers  like  that,  and  he  utterly 
ruined  Ashby  Major,  the  other  back. 

Nubbs  had  gone  to  bed  when  we  got  back, 
and  the  matron,  knowing  Nubbs  had  a  tricky 
system,  sent  for  Doctor  Barnes.  Nubbs, 
therefore,  gave  himself  away. 

M.  never  looked  at  any  of  us  again,  and 
she  and  Steggles  undoubtedly  became  fright- 
ful pals ;  but  the  next  term,  just  before 
Easter,  I  had  the  pleasure  of  writing  a  fine 
letter  to  Mathers,  who  had  left  Merivale, 
and  was  reading  for  six  months  with  a  pri- 
vate tutor  before  going  to  Cambridge.  This 
is  part  of  the  letter  : 

"  Dear  Mathers,"  I  wrote,  "  you  will  be 
interested  to  know  that  Browne  has  come 
down  on  Steggles  at  last.  I  fancy  Browne 
knew  the  Doctor  was  fairly  sick  of  Steggles 
and  wanted  to  be  rid  of  him.  In  fact,  I  heard 
21 


The  Human  Boy 

the  Doctor  call  Steggles  a  canker-worm  my- 
self. Anyway,  Browne  blew  np  on  the  smok- 
ing, and  Steggles  will  soon  probably  vanish, 
like  the  dew  upon  the  fleece.  M.  cried  a 
bit,  I  fancy,  when  she  heard  it,  but  Nubbs 
says  she  smiled  at  him  two  mornings  after- 
wards coming  out  of  chapel.  Nubbs  expects 
to  crack  (his  voice)  any  day,  bnt  he  hopes 
to  get  a  definite  understanding  with  M.  be- 
fore it  happens.  It'll  be  too  late  after.  Of 
course  she  never  looks  at  me.  She  told 
Steggles,  and  he  told  me,  that  she  could 
not  possibly  care  for  a  person  she  had  once 
seen  the  hue  of  a  Liberty  Art  Fabric — mean- 
ing me.  I  scragged  Steggles  after  he  told 
me.  But  it  is  all  over  now.  I  believe  he  is 
to  go  into  his  father's  business — Steggles  & 
Stote,  Wine  Merchants.  M.  is  more  beauti- 
ful than  ever,  though  I'm  afraid  she's  got  a 
bad  disposition.  To  reflect  on  a  fellow's  col- 
or at  such  a  time  as  that  was  a  bit  rough." 
22 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 


THIS  is  the  story  of  the  most  tremendous 
thing  that  ever  happened  at  Dunston's, 
or  any  other  school,  I  should  think.  Though 
in  it  luckily,  I  didn't  do  any  of  the  big 
part,  being  merely  one  of  those  chaps  who 
were  flogged  and  not  expelled  afterwards. 
Trelawny  and  Brad  well  carried  the  thing 
through,  and  all  the  other  fellows  in  the 
Wing  Dormitory  followed  their  lead.  And, 
mind  you,  everybody  had  the  welfare  of  the 
school  at  heart.  It  seemed  a  jolly  brave 
sort  of  thing  to  do,  and  jolly  interesting. 
Trelawny  arranged  the  military  side  of  the 
business,  and  Bradwell,  whose  father  is 
known  as  the  " Whiteley  "  of  some  place  in 
Yorkshire,  looked  to  the  commissariat,  which 
means  feeding.  As  to  Trelawny,  who  really 
23 


The  Human  Boy 

captained  the  dormitory,  he  was  Cornish, 
and  a  relation  of  that  very  chap  fifty  thou- 
sand Cornish  men  wanted  to  know  the  reason 
why  about  long  ago.  He  was  going  to  be  a 
soldier,  read  history  books  for  choice,  and 
already  knew  many  military  words. 

I  was  Brad welFs  fag  at  the  time,  because 
Watson  minor  had  failed  in  some  secret 
enterprise,  and  I  remember  the  first  con- 
versation which  led  to  everything.  Happen- 
ing to  take  some  tuck  in  to  Bradwell  in  the 
Fifth  class-room,  I  found  Trelawny  there 
and  heard  him  say  : 

"The  only  way.  A  protest,  and  a  jolly 
dignified  one,  must  be  made.  It's  for  the 
credit  of  the  school,  and  if  the  Doctor  will 
not  see  it  we  must  show  him.  I've  thought 
about  it  a  lot,  and  I  think  if  a  section  of 
chaps  could  put  themselves  in  a  strong, 
fortified  position  they  might  demand  to  be 
heard,  and  even  be  able  to  offer  an — an  ulti- 
matum. Of  course,  doing  the  thing  for  the 
good  of  the  school  and  not  for  ourselves 
makes  us  morally  right." 

"  Of  course,"  said  Bradwell. 

"But  we  must  be  physically  strong.  In 
24 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

warfare  the  relative  positions  of  the  sides 
are  always  taken  into  account  when  the 
treaties  of  peace  are  arranged." 

(i  What  are  you  staring  at  ?"  said  Brad- 
well  to  me,     "You  hook  it." 

So  I  hooked.  But  I  knew  perfectly  well 
what  they  were  talking  about.  Everybody 
in  the  Wing  Dormitory  did,  because  they 
often  discussed  the  same  question  after  they 
thought  the  rest  of  the  chaps  were  asleep. 
It  was  the  new  mathematical  master, 
Thompson,  who  troubled  not  only  Trelawny 
and  Bradwell  but  a  lot  of  the  other  fellows. 
Trelawny  had  called  him  an  "unholy 
bounder"  the  third  day  he  was  there,  and 
that  seemed  to  be  a  general  opinion.  Yet, 
with  all  his  bounderishness,  he  was  awfully 
clever,  and  meant  well.  But  he  didn't  know 
anything  about  chaps  in  a  general  way,  and 
he  left  out  his  h's  and  stuck  them  in  with 
awfully  ram  effects.  Thompson  tried  hard 
to  be  friendly  to  everybody,  but  only  the  kids 
liked  him.  He  couldn't  understand  some- 
how, and  insulted  chaps  in  the  most  fright- 
ful way,  not  seeing  any  difference  between 
fellows  at  the  top  of  the  school  and  mere 
25 


The  Human  Boy 

kids  at  the  bottom.  Captains  of  elevens 
were  as  nothing  to  him.  He  seemed  to 
have  read  np  boys  like  he  read  mathematics 
and  stuff  —  from  rotten  books.  He  would 
say  sometimes,  "Now,  you  fellows,  let's 
'ave  a  jolly  game  of  leap-frog  before  the  bell 
rings/'  and  things  like  that.  Boys  never 
do  play  leap-frog  except  in  books  really. 
Once  he  offered  to  show  Trelawny  how  to 
make  a  kite,  and  he  asked  Chambers — Cham- 
bers, mind  you,  the  Captain  of  the  First 
Eleven  at  Cricket — whether  he  knew  a  shop 
where  there  were  capital  iron  hoops  for  sale  at 
a  shilling  each.  I  heard  him  say  it,  and  he  put  it 
like  this:  "I  say,  Chambers,  do  you  know  those 
splendid  'oops  they  sell  at  Burford's  in  'Igh 
Street  ?  It's  out  of  bounds,  but  if  you  like 
I'll  get  you  one  this  evening.  They've  got 
iron  crooks  and  everything.  I  make  this 
offer  because  you  understood  a  little  of  what 
I  said  about  Conic  Sections  this  afternoon." 
Thompson  meant  so  jolly  well  that  nobody 
could  get  in  a  wax  with  him  personally  ;  and, 
as  I  say,  the  kids,  who  didn't  see  the  "un- 
holy bounder"  side  of  him,  and  only  knew 
he  stood  gallons  of  ginger-beer  on  half-holi- 
26 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

days  in  the  playing-fields,  liked  him  better 
than  anybody.  But  Trelawny  took  big 
views,  and  so  did  Bradwell,  and  they  decided 
to  make  a  definite  protest. 

Nothing  happened  till  one  day  Thompson 
said  something  about  Trelawney's  "Celtic 
thickness  of  skull."  That  stung  Trelawny 
like  nettles,  and  he  set  to  work  and  ar- 
ranged the  great  plot  of  the  Wing  Dormi- 
tory. He  decided  that  the  fifteen  chaps 
who  slept  in  the  isolated  Wing  Dormitory 
of  Dunston's  were  to  fortify  the  place,  and 
hold  it  before  the  world  and  the  Doctor  as 
a  protest  against  Thompson.  Every  chap 
in  the  dormitory,  from  Trelawny  and  Brad- 
well  to  Watson  minor,  signed  their  names 
in  their  own  blood  on  a  paper  Trelawny 
drew  out ;  and  Watson  minor  fainted  while 
he  was  doing  it,  not  being  able  to  see  his 
own  gore  on  a  pen  without  going  off.  We 
swore  by  a  tremendous  swear  to  obey  Tre- 
lawny, to  fortify  the  Wing  Dormitory 
against  siege,  to  devote  every  penny  of 
our  week's  pocket-money  to  provisions,  and 
to  hold  out  till  we  starved,  having  first 
signed  another  paper  for  Doctor  Dunston 
27 


The  Human  Boy 

explaining  onr  united  protest  against  Thomp- 
son, and  hoping  for  the  good  of  the  school 
that  he  would  be  removed.  I  didn't  under- 
stand much  about  it  really.  In  fact,  I  don't 
believe  anybody  did  but  Trelawny  and  Brad- 
well.  Only  they  said  we  were  acting  for  the 
good  of  the  school,  and  they  also  said  that 
if  we  held  the  Wing  Dormitory  properly  noth- 
ing short  of  cannon  or  starvation  could  dis- 
lodge us.  It  was  a  tremendously  tall  building, 
complete  in  itself,  with  iron  fire-proof  doors 
constructed  to  cut  it  off  from  the  rest  of  the 
school,  and  with  a  bath-room  and  a  lavatory 
adjoining,  all  at  a  great  height  above  the 
ground.  The  windows  were  barred  to  keep 
chaps  getting  out.  The  bars  would  also 
keep  chaps  getting  in,  as  Trelawny  pointed 
out.  He  found  also  that  it  was  possible 
when  the  iron  doors  were  closed  to  pull 
down  some  wood -work,  and  stick  things 
behind  the  doors  so  as  they  could  not  be 
opened  again.  The  only  entrance  to  the 
Wing  Dormitory  was  through  these  iron 
doors,  so  once  shut  we  were  safe  against 
anything  but  gunpowder ;  and  Trelawny 
said  Doctor  Dunston  was  not  the  man  to 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

resort  to  physical  means,  especially  if  it 
meant  knocking  the  place  about.  Bradwell 
came  out  wonderfully  about  the  food,  and 
knowing  jolly  well  that  they  would  turn 
the  water  out  of  the  bath  -  room  when  the 
siege  started,  he  made  every  chap  fill  his 
basin  and  jug  the  night  before ;  because 
fresh  water  is  vital  to  a  siege. 

There  were  fifteen  chaps,  and  the  time 
came  at  last,  and  one  night  we  laid  the 
manifesto  on  the  mat  outside  the  iron  door, 
made  everything  fast,  and  waited  to  see 
what  would  happen.  Some  fellows  thought 
that  Thompson  would  be  sent  away  at  once, 
to  avoid  the  affair  becoming  serious  ;  others 
fancied  we  should  be  starved  out  or  expelled 
to  a  man.  Trelawny  never  hazarded  any 
guess  at  what  would  be  the  end  of  it.  "  We 
are  doing  our  duty  in  the  interests  of  the 
school,"  he  said,  "  and  whatever  happens  we 
mean  well ;  and  if  it  gets  into  print  the 
sympathy  of  all  chaps  in  public  schools  will 
be  on  our  side." 

29 


The  Human  Boy 


ii 


When  the  gas  was  turned  out  at  the 
meter  on  the  night  preceding  the  siege, 
Trelawny  made  a  short  speech.  First  he 
lighted  two  candles  and  made  us  sign  the 
protest ;  then  he  explained  his  military  sys- 
tem of  night  and  day  watches  and  guards. 
Each  of  the  four  windows  had  a  guard  at 
all  hours,  and  two  chaps  were  to  be  sta- 
tioned at  the  iron  door.  This  was  made 
doubly  strong  by  beds  piled  against  it,  af- 
ter the  manifesto  had  been  finally  signed 
and  left  outside.     The  document  ran  thus  : 

' e  We,  the  undersigned,  thinking  that  the 
fame  of  Dunston's  is  tarnished  by  Mr.  Thomp- 
son, M.A.,  Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Camb., 
hereby  protest,  and  formally  assert  them- 
selves to  call  attention  to  Mr.  Thompson. 
We,  the  undersigned,  have  no  personal 
grudge  to  Mr.  Thompson,  but  think  him 
unsuited  to  carry  on  the  great  reputation  of 
Dunston's.  We,  the  undersigned,  take  this 
important  step  fully  alive  to  the  gravity  of 
it,  for  we  are  prepared  to  suffer  if  necessary 
30 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

to  call  attention  to  the  subject.  We  do  not 
doubt  Mr.  Thompson's  goodness,  and  wish 
it  to  be  understood  that  the  action  is  ab- 
stract and  not  personal.  A  string  will  be 
lowered  from  the  third  window  of  the  Wing 
Dormitory  to-morrow  at  8.30  A.M.  Any 
answer  to  the  protest  will  receive  instant 
attention  from  us  the  undersigned." 

Then  followed  the  names. 

Of  course,  it  was  all  Greek  to  the  kids, 
but  they  put  their  trust  in  Trelawny  and 
signed  to  a  kid. 

Inside  the  dormitory  we  were  jolly  busy, 
too,  because  after  Trelawny,  as  commander, 
had  made  his  rules  and  regulations  clear, 
Bradwell,  as  the  head  of  the  commissariat, 
drew  up  a  list  of  the  total  supplies,  and 
showed  what  each  fellow  had  contributed  to 
the  store.  This  list  I  copied  for  Bradwell 
at  the  time,  with  notes  about  the  different 
supplies.  It  comes  in  here,  and  I  must  give 
it,  just  to  show  what  different  ideas  different 
chaps  have  about  the  things  you  ought  to 
eat  in  a  siege. 

Trelawny. — Two  hams,  eight  loaves  of 
bread. 

31 


The  Human  Boy 

Beadwell. — Three  tins  potted  salmon, 
two  seed-cakes  (big),  box  of  biscuits. 

Ashby  Ma  joe. — Ten  tins  sardines.  (Ash- 
by  has  five  shillings  a  week  pocket-money, 
his  father  being  rather  rich.  Bradwell  said 
it  was  rather  a  pity  he  spent  it  all  in  sardines.) 

Ashby  Minoe. — Three  pats  of  butter, 
three  tins  Swiss  milk,  one  tin  Guava  jelly. 
(Bradwell  was  awfully  pleased  about  the 
milk,  because  he  said  it  was  at  once  nour- 
ishing and  pleasant  to  the  taste.) 

Wilson.  —  Six  dried  herrings,  two  pots 
veal  and  ham  paste,  one  pot  marmalade. 
(Herrings  useless,  unless  eaten  raw.) 

West. — Four  bottles  raspberry  vinegar. 
(I  am  West,  and  I  thought  raspberry  vine- 
gar would  be  a  jolly  good  thing  to  break  the 
monotony  of  a  siege.  But  Bradwell  said  it 
was  simply  a  luxury.) 

Moeeant.  —  One  hamper  containing 
twenty-four  apples,  twenty-seven  pears,  two 
pots  blackberry  jam.  (Morrant  has  no 
pocket-money,  but  Bradwell  said  the  fruit 
was  good  for  a  change.) 

Gideon". — Nothing.  (Gideon  is  a  Jew  by 
birth,  and  gets  ten  shillings  a  week  pocket- 
32 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

money.  He  pretended  he  had  forgotten. 
TrelaWny  says  he  will  suffer  for  it  in  the 
course  of  the  siege.) 

Mathers. — Eight  pieces  of  shortbread, 
five  slabs  of  toffee,  seven  sausage  -  rolls. 
(The  rolls  were  cut  in  half  to  be  eaten  first 
thing  before  they  went  bad.  But  Bradwell 
said  Mathers  had  made  the  selection  of  a 
fool,  and  so  Mathers  was  rather  vexed  with 
Bradwell.) 

Newnes. — Ten  loaves  (five  brown),  one 
packet  of  beef  tabloids.  (Trelawny  congrat- 
ulated Newnes.) 

McInnes. — A  lot  of  spring  onions  and 
lettuces,  costing  one-and-sixpence.  (Mcln- 
nes  had  been  reading  a  book  about  chaps 
getting  scurvy  on  a  raft,  and  he  thought  a 
siege  would  be  just  the  place  for  scurvy,  so 
he  bought  all  green  stuff ;  and  Bradwell 
said  it  was  good.) 

Oorkey  Mintmus.  —  Three  pounds  of 
mixed  sweets.  (Bradwell  smacked  his  head 
when  he  heard  what  Corkey  minimus  had 
got ;  but  Trelawny  pointed  out  that  a  few 
sweets  served  out  from  time  to  time  might 
distract  the  mind.) 
c  33 


The  Human  Boy 

Derbyshire. — A  pigeon-pie  and  thirteen 
currant  buns  With  saffron  in  them. 

Forrest.  — Four  pots  Bovril,  one  bottle 
cider.  (Bovril  can  be  taken  on  bread  like 
treacle,  and  once  saved  the  lives  of  several 
shipwrecked  sailors.) 

Watson  Mi^or. — Two  pounds  dog-bis- 
cuits, one  pound  dried  figs,  one  box  of  dates. 
(Asked  why  he  took  dog-biscuits,  he  ex- 
plained it  was  because  he  had  seen  an  adver- 
tisement about  the  goodness  of  them.  It 
said  they  had  dried  buffalo  meat  in  them, 
which  was  a  thing  you  could  live  for  an  im- 
mense duration  of  time  on.  Trelawny  said 
that  was  pretty  fair  sense  for  a  kid.) 

All  this  splendid  food  was  brought  out  of 
boxes  where  it  had  been  hidden  and  placed 
in  the  hands  of  Bradwell ;  and  that  night  he 
sat  up  with  a  candle  and  drew  out  bills  of 
fare  and  made  calculations.  We  were  rath- 
er surprised  in  the  morning  to  hear  the  ra- 
tions would  not  last  more  than  a  fortnight, 
but  Trelawny  said  the  siege  must  be  over 
long  before  that.  Nobody  slept  much,  and 
many  had  dressed  before  the  first  bell  rang. 
34 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

When  the  second  bell  rang  Trelawny  and 
Bradwell  went  to  the  door  to  listen. 

Presently  Thompson,  of  all  people,  came 
up  and  tried  to  get  in  and  couldn't.  He 
shook  the  door,  then  saw  the  envelope  ad- 
dressed to  the  Doctor,  and  said  : 

"  What's  the  meaning  of  this,  you  fellows  ? 
Let  me  in  at  once  \" 

But  nobody  answered.  Then  he  cleared 
off.  At  8.30  the  string  was  lowered  from 
the  window,  and  Trelawny  went  and  stood 
by  it  to  pull  up  any  letter  that  might  be 
fastened  to  it.  But  none  was.  Some  of 
the  chaps  were  prowling  about  outside  look- 
ing at  the  Wing  Dormitory,  but  Trelawny 
wouldn't  let  anybody  go  to  the  windows  ex- 
cept himself. 

Then,  as  nothing  happened,  we  had  break- 
fast. Mclnnes  and  Forrest  were  told  off 
to  help  Bradwell,  and  each  chap's  rations 
were  put  on  his  bed  after,  he  had  made  it. 
We  all  got  the  same  except  Gideon — a  slice 
of  bread,  two  sardines,  half  one  of  Mathers's 
sausage-rolls,  and  half  a  tumbler  of  water. 
So  we  began  at  once  to  see  what  a  jolly 
serious  thing  a  siege  is.  And  Gideon  saw 
35 


The  Human  Boy 

it  more  than  we  did,  because  he  had  no 
sardines  and  no  sausage  -  roll.  He  offered 
Trelawny  money  for  a  little  more  food,  but 
Trelawny  said  he  shouldn't  have  as  much 
as  one  mixed  sweet,  though  he  might  pay 
gold  for  it.  He  said,  "  You  will  have  barely 
enough  to  keep  you  alive."  And  Gideon 
turned  awfully  white  when  he  heard  it. 

Breakfast  didn't  take  more  than  about  five 
minutes,  then  there  was  a  tremendous  knock- 
ing at  the  iron  door,  and  Bradwell  said  the 
trouble  had  begun,  but  Trelawny  said  it  was 
the  summons  to  a  parley.  Anyway,  we  heard 
the  Doctor's  voice,  and  it  wasn't  much  of  a 
parley,  strictly  speaking,  because  he  spoke 
first,  and  merely  gave  us  two  minutes  to  be 
in  our  places  down-stairs. 

"  If  you  don't  obey,  one  and  all  of  you," 
said  the  Doctor,  "you  must  take  the  conse- 
quences. As  it  is,  they  will  be  sufficiently 
grave.  Any  further  offence  I  shall  know 
how  to  treat." 

"If  you  please,  sir,"  said  Trelawny, 
"the  string  is  out  of  the  window.  We 
are  doing  this  for  the  good  of  the  school, 
and—" 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

Then  he  stopped,  because  he  had  heard 
the  Doctor  go  away. 

" He'll  try  a  blacksmith  first,"  said  Forrest; 
"  then,  when  they  find  they  can't  do  anything 
with  this  iron  door,  he'll  send  for  policemen." 

But  nothing  was  done,  strangely  enough, 
and  Trelawny  made  the  chaps  lie  down  and 
sleep  if  they  conld  in  the  afternoon,  because 
he  expected  a  night  attack  with  ladders. 
To  get  in  it  would  be  necessary  to  remove 
the  bars  from  the  windows,  and  anybody  at- 
tempting to  do  so  would,  of  course,  be  at  our 
mercy  with  the  windows  open. 

For  dinner  that  day  we  had  one  of  Tre- 
lawny's  hams  cut  into  fifteen  pieces,  with 
two  rather  thin  slices  of  bread,  one  spring 
onion,  and  three  mixed  sweets  each,  and  as 
much  raspberry  vinegar  as  would  go  into  a 
bullet -mold  that  Wilson  had.  Gideon  ate 
the  ham  like  anybody  else,  which  shows 
Jews  don't  refuse  pork  in  any  shape  at  times 
of  siege,  whatever  they  say.  Trelawny 
wouldn't  give  him  any  raspberry  vinegar, 
but  Ashby  minor  let  him  have  one  of  his 
mixed  sweets,  which  was  green  and  had 
arsenic  in  it,  Ashby  minor  thought. 
37 


The  Human  Boy 

It  seemed  a  frightfully  long  day,  and  noth- 
ing being  done  against  ns  made  it  longer. 
Bradwell  tried  to  cook  Wilson's  herrings 
with  stuff  out  of  a  pillow-case,  but  unfort- 
unately failed.  Trelawny  explained  that 
Dunston  was  working  out  tactics,  and  would 
do  something  when  the  moon  rose.  He  said 
our  motto  was  to  be  "Defence,  not  De- 
fiance ";  but  Derbyshire  said  they  were  going 
to  starve  us  out  like  rats,  so  as  to  reduce  the 
glory  as  much  as  possible.  One  or  two  chaps 
had  private  rows  that  day,  and  Trelawny 
was  pretty  short  and  sharp.  He  said  we 
were  to  regard  ourselves  as  under  martial 
law,  and  he  stopped  Forrest  having  any  tea 
at  all  because  he  looked  out  of  the  window 
and  waved  his  hand  to  Steggles  in  the  play- 
ground. What  made  it  worse  for  Forrest 
was  that  we  opened  one  of  his  pots  of  Bovril 
at  that  very  tea,  and  of  course  he  didn't  have 
any.  But  Trelawny  said  it  was  good  disci- 
pline, and  wouldn't  let  Mathers  divide  his 
share  with  young  Forrest,  though  he  want- 
ed to. 

The  day  dragged  out.  Nothing  was  done, 
and  no  letter  was  put  on  the  string.  Then 
38 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

night  came  and  moonlight,  and  Trelawny 
set  watches  at  each  window  and  door  with 
directions  to  wake  him  instantly  if  anything 
happened  or  anybody  assembled  ontside  be- 
low. But  he  didn't  sleep  really.  In  fact, 
only  a  few  of  the  kids  did.  Bradwell  got  a 
bit  down  in  the  month  after  dark,  and  I 
heard  him  say  to  Trelawny  it  wasn't  turning 
out  like  he  thought,  and  Trelawny  said  : 

"It's  always  the  same  when  a  position  is 
impregnable.  I  could  show  you  a  dozen 
similar  sieges  in  history.  Of  course,  it's  the 
most  uninteresting  sort  of  siege  when  chaps 
simply  sit  and  see  the  enemy  get  to  the  end 
of  their  food  supplies,  but  they  won't  do 
that  with  us.  The  day  boys  will  talk,  and 
old  Dunston  will  raise  heaven  and  earth  to 
keep  it  out  of  the  printed  papers.  I  bet  he'll 
tie  something  to  the  string  to-morrow." 

Some  of  us  tried  to  take  a  bright  view 
like  Trelawny,  but  when  we  heard  him  tell 
Bradwell  to  run  no  risks  and  serve  out  as 
little  bread  as  possible,  we  felt  that  he  did 
not  really  feel  as  hopeful  of  a  short  siege 
as  he  seemed.  Just  before  dusk  Corkey 
minimus  was  caught  in  the  act  of  flinging 
39 


The  Human  Boy 

a  letter  out  of  the  window  addressed  to  his 
mother.  It  was  torn  up,  and  he  was  cau- 
tioned. That  ended  the  day,  and  nothing 
else  happened  until  a  quarter  to  one  o'clock. 
Then  Bradwell,  whose  watch  it  was,  called 
"  Cave  \"  and  came  to  Trelawny  with  fright- 
ful excitement  to  say  that  there  was  the 
head  of  a  ladder  at  his  window,  and  a  man 
climbing  up.  Trelawny  was  there  in  a  sec- 
ond, and  asked  in  a  loud  voice  what  the  man 
wanted,  and  said  he'd  throw  the  ladder  down 
if  the  man  came  up  another  rung.  But  the 
man  said  : 

"  Hush !  you  silly  fellow ;  I'm  a  friend 
with  news  from  the  enemy.  The  least  you 
can  do  is  to  'ear  what  I've  got  to  say." 

"Good  Lord!"  said  Trelawny,  "it's 
Thompson  I" 

And  so  it  was,  and  his  huge  head  soon 
got  level  with  the  window,  and  looked  like 
a  bull's  against  the  moonlight.  Trelawny 
made  everybody  get  out  of  earshot  except 
Bradwell ;  but  he  didn't  happen  to  see  me, 
being  rolled  up  in  bed  near  the  window,  so 
I  heard. 

First  Thompson  said  : 
40 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

"  Look  'ere,  yon  Cornish  boy,  I'm  sorry 
to  find  we.  'aven't  'it  it  off  by  any  means, 
and  you  want  me  to  go,  and  you've  locked 
yourself  and  friends  up  'ere  as  a  protest. 
Now,  'ow  'ave  I  'urt  your  feelings,  and  what 
have  I  done  ?" 

Which  was  a  bit  difficult  for  Trelawny ; 
but  he  fell  back  on  the  manifesto  to  the 
Doctor. 

"It's  no  personal  matter,  sir.  We  wish  it 
to  be  understood  that  the  action  is  abstract." 

' '  Oh.  Well,  I  can't  say  I  know  what  the 
devil  you  mean  by  that ;  but  I  like  you  all 
better  than  ever,  and  I  understand  this 
much,  that  you  don't  like  me.  I'm  not- 
proud.  I'm  quite  as  ready  to  learn  as  to 
teach.  Tell  me  what  makes  you  do  this, 
you  queer  things." 

"  We  don't  think  you  are  the  right  man 
for  Dunston's,  sir,"  said  Trelawny,  firmly. 

"Well,  but  isn't  Doctor  D-anston  the  best 
judge  ?  His  experience  reaches  back  rather 
farther  than  yours.  Anyway,  I'm  not  going. 
You'll  'ave  to  tolerate  me.  You'll  'ave  to 
like  me  too.  I've  disobeyed  all  orders  by 
climbing  up  'ere  now  to  advise  you  to  give  in 
41 


The  Human  Boy 

to-morrow.  Take  my  advice,  and  come 
out  at  the  first  bell,  and  with  ropes  round 
your  necks.  Measures  are  in  'and  ;  and  as 
your  protest  has  utterly  failed,  the  sooner 
you  give  in  and  take  your  punishment  the 
better.  I've  done  my  best  to  make  it  as 
light  as  I  can  ;  but  boys  mustn't  do  this  sort 
of  thing  in  big  schools,  you  know.  It's 
very  naughty  indeed." 

"  We  shall  keep  up  the  protest  for  another 
day  at  least,  sir,"  said  Trelawny,  with  a  lot 
of  side  in  his  voice. 

"  No,  my  lad,  you  won't,"  answered 
Thompson.  "  The  Doctor  has  taken  my 
advice,  and  by  very  simple  means,  with  the 
least  possible  waste  of  time,  trouble,  and 
money,  we  shall  enter  your  stronghold 
to-morrow.  I  am  quite  good-tempered  to- 
day. To-morrow  I  shall  probably  be  quite 
cross  and  'ot.  The  matter  is  in  my  'ands. 
Do  be  good  boys  and  yield  while  there  is 
time.     The  sooner  the  better." 

ti  j  regret  we  cannot  comply  with  your 
terms,  sir,"  said  Trelawny. 

"  I'm  not  offering  any,"  answered  Mr. 
Thompson.  "I  only  want  to  make  yonr 
42 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

foolishness  fall  as  light  as  possible.  Your 
mothers'  and  fathers'  'earts  will  ache  over 
this  headstrong  business." 

"  The  parley  is  ended/'  said  Trelawney. 

"All  right,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "I'm 
afraid  you're  a  hawful  little  prig,  Trelawny." 
Then  he  went  down  the  ladder,  and  looking 
out,  Bradwell  reported  that  he  saw  him 
taking  it  back  to  the  gardener's  shed  in  the 
shrubbery. 


Ill 


There  is  not  much  more  to  be  said  about 
the  protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory.  I  sup- 
pose Thompson  was  better  up  in  tactics 
really  than  Trelawny.  Anyway,  he  found 
a  weak  spot  that  Trelawny  never  thought 
of,  and  he  ended  the  siege  by  half-past  seven 
the  following  morning. 

About  six  Ashby  major,  whose  watch  it 
was,  reported  that  the  school  fire-escape 
was  coming  round  the  corner.  With  it  ap- 
peared Mr.  Thompson,  Mr.  Mannering,  who 
is  an  Oxford  "Blue"  and  not  much  smaller 
than  Mr.  Thompson,  the  Doctor,  the  gar- 


The  Human  Boy 

dener,  and  the  military  agent  who  drills  our 
volunteer  corps  and  teaches  gymnastics. 
They  put  the  escape  against  the  wall  of  the 
Wing  Dormitory,  between  two  windows, 
where  it  couldn't  be  reached  by  us.  Then 
Thompson  and  Mannering  went  up,  and  the 
sergeant  and  gardener  followed.  The  Doc- 
tor waited  at  the  foot  of  the  ladder. 

"  They'll   get   through    the    roof  !"  said 
Trelawny ;  "I  never  thought  of  that  !" 

Trelawny  turned  awfully  rum  in  the  face, 
and  tried  to  think  out  a  way  of  repelling 
a  roof  attack ;  but  there  wasn't  time.  In 
about  ten  minutes  or  so  the  end  of  an  iron 
bar  came  through  the  ceiling ;  then  followed 
a  regular  avalanche  of  plaster  and  dust,  that 
fell  on  Watson  minor  and  jolly  nearly  smoth- 
ered him.  Then  came  Thompson,  Manner- 
ing followed,  and  the  gardener  and  the 
sergeant  dropped  after  them  as  quick  as 
lightning.  Of  course,  we  were  done,  be- 
cause only  half  of  us  were  fighters,  the  rest 
being  kids ;  and  Trelawny  himself  being  just 
fifteen  and  Bradwell  fourteen  and  Ashby 
major  twelve  and  a  half,  and  I  only  eleven 
and  a  half,  it  was  no  good. 
44 


The  Protest  of  the  Wing  Dormitory 

' ( We  surrender,"  said  Trelawny. 

"Surrender,  you  little  brute,  I  should 
think  you  did  .yield  !"  said  Mannering,  who 
had  cut  his  hand  getting  the  slates  off  the 
roof,  and  was  in  a  rare  bate. 

"  You  needn't  insult  a  defeated  force,  sir," 
said  Trelawny,  keeping  his  nerve  jolly  well. 
"We  are  prepared  to  pay  the  penalty  of 
failure,  and  having  meant  well  we — we  don't 
care.** 

But  whether  we  meant  well  or  not,  I  know 
Trelawney  and  Bradwell  both  got  expelled, 
though  Thompson  was  said  to  have  tried 
very  hard  for  them.  Dunston  didn't  seem 
to  realize  what  frightfully  good  motives 
prompted  them  to  protest  against  Thompson 
in  an  abstract  way.  Nothing  was  done  to 
anybody  else  except  Ashby  major  and  me 
and  Wilson.  We  were  flogged  by  Mr.  Man- 
nering for  the  Doctor ;  and  he  did  it  as  you 
might  expect  from  a  "Blue." 

As  for  Thompson,  he  stayed  on,  and  the 
protest  never  got  into  print ;  and  there  wasn't 
much  disgrace  for  Trelawny  or  Bradwell 
after  all,  because  the  first  afterwards  got  into 
Woolwich  ten  from  the  top,  through  an 
45 


The  Human  Boy 

army  crammer's,  and  the  second  joined  his 
father,  who  was  the  Whiteley  of  the  North 
I  spoke  of.  He  wrote  to  me  only  a  week 
ago  to  say  that  he  was  getting  a  hundred 
pounds  a  year  from  his  governor  for  doing 
much  less  than  he  had  to  do  at  Dunston's. 
Mind  you,  Thompson  is  a  jolly  good  sort, 
really,  and  we  know  it  now ;  and,  as  I  heard 
my  uncle  say  of  somebody  else,  I  don't  sup- 
pose it's  a  matter  of  life  and  death  whether 
or  no  a  chap  puts  his  h's  in  the  wrong  places 
if  his  heart's  in  the  right  one. 
46 


"Freckles"   and  "Frenchy" 

HE  was  the  most  peculiar  chap  that 
ever  came  to  Merivale,  not  excepting 
even  Mason,  who  shot  the  Doctor's  wife's 
parrot  with  a  catapult,  and,  after  he  had  been 
flogged,  offered  to  stuff  it  in  the  face  of 
the  whole  school,  and  nearly  got  expelled. 
Freckles  was  so  called  owing  to  his  skin, 
which  was  simply  a  complicated  pattern 
much  like  what  you  can  see  in  any  map  of 
the  Grecian  Archipelago.  This  arose,  he 
thought,  from  his  having  been  born  in  Aus- 
tralia. Anyway,  it  was  rum  to  see ;  and  so 
were  his  hands,  which  had  reddish  down  on 
the  backs.  His  eyes  were,  also  reddish — a 
sort  of  mixture  of  red  and  gray  specks,  and 
they  glimmered  like  a  cat's  when  he  was 
angry,  which  was  often.  His  real  name  was 
Maine,  and  he  had  no  side.  His  father 
had  made  a  big  fortune  selling  wool  at 
47 


The  Human  Boy 

Sydney,  and  his  grandfather  was  one  of  the 
last  people  to  be  transported  to  Botany  Bay 
through  no  fault  of  his  own.  After  he  had 
been  on  a  convict  ship  five  years  a  chap 
at  home  confessed  on  his  death-bed  that  he 
had  done  the  thing  Maine's  grandfather 
was  transported  for.  So  they  naturally  let 
Maine's  grandfather  go  free  ;  and  he  was  so 
much  annoyed  about  it  that  he  never  came 
back  home  again,  but  married  a  farmer's 
daughter  near  Sydney  and  settled  out  there 
for  good. 

Maine  didn't  think  great  things  of  England, 
and  was  always  talking  about  the  Australian 
forests  of  blue  gum-trees  and  bush,  and 
sneering  rather  at  the  size  of  our  forests 
round  Merivale,  though  they  were  good  ones. 
He  never  joined  in  games,  but  roamed  away 
alone  for  miles  and  miles  into  the  country  on 
half -holidays,  and  trespassed  with  a  cheek  I 
never  saw  equalled.  He  could  run  like  a 
hare — especially  about  half  a  mile  or  so, 
which,  as  he  explained  to  me,  is  just  about 
a  distance  to  blow  a  keeper.  Certainly, 
though  often  chased,  he  was  never  caught 
and  never  recognized,  owing  to  things  he  did 
48 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  " 

which  he  had  learned  in  Australia  and  copied 
from  famous  bushrangers.  His  great  hope 
some  day  was  to  be  a  bushranger  himself, 
and  he  practised  in  a  quiet  way  every  Satur- 
day afternoon,  making  it  a  rule  to  go  out  of 
bounds  always.  His  get-np  was  fine.  My 
name  is  Tomkins,  called  "  Nubby  "  because 
I  happen  to  have  a  rather  large  sort  of  nose, 
and,  being  fond  of  the  country  and  not  keen 
on  games,  Maine  rather  took  to  me,  and  after 
I  had  sworn  on  crossed  knives  not  to  say  a 
word  to  a  soul  (which  I  never  did  till  Freck- 
les left)  he  told  me  his  secrets  and  showed 
me  his  things.  If  you'd  seen  Freckles  start- 
ing for  an  excursion  you  wouldn't  have  said 
there  was  anything  remarkable  about  him; 
but  really  he  was  armed  to  the  teeth,  and 
had  everything  a  bushranger  would  be  likely 
to  want  in  a  quiet  place  like  Merivale.  Down 
his  leg  was  the  barrel  of  an  air-gun,  strong 
enough  to  kill  any  small  thing  like  a  cat  at 
twenty-five  yards ;  the  rest  of  the  gun  was 
arranged  inside  the  lining  of  his  coat,  and 
the  slugs  it  fired  he  carried  loose  in  his 
trousers-pockets.  Round  his  waist  he  had  a 
leather  belt  he  got  from  a  sailor  for  a  pound. 
d  49 


The  Human  Boy- 
inside  the  leather  was  human  skin,  said  to 
be  flayed  off  a  chap  by  cannibals  somewhere, 
which  was  a  splendid  thing  to  have  for  your 
own,  if  it  was  true ;  and  in  the  belt  a  place 
had  been  specially  made  for  a  knife.  Freck- 
les, of  course,  had  a  knife  in  it — a  "bowie" 
knife  that  made  you  cold  to  see.  He  never 
used  it,  but  kept  it  ready,  and  said  if  a 
keeper  ever  caught  him  he  possibly  might 
have  to.  In  addition  to  these  things  he 
carried  in  his  coat  -  pockets  a  little  spirit- 
lamp  and  a  collapsible  tin  pot  and  a  bag 
of  tea. 

He  said  tea  was  the  very  life  of  men  in  the 
bush,  and  that  often  after  a  hard  escape, 
when  he  was  out  of  danger,  he  would  get 
away  behind  a  woodstack  or  under  banks 
of  a  stream,  or  some  such  secret  place,  and 
brew  a  cup  and  drink  it,  and  feel  the  better 
for  it. 

Lastly,  Freckles  had  a  flat  lead  mask  with 
holes  for  the  eyes  and  mouth,  which  he 
always  fitted  on  when  trespassing.  He  said 
it  was  copied  from  the  helmet  Ned  Kelly, 
the  King  of  the  Bushrangers,  used  to  wear, 
but  it  was  not  bullet-proof,  but  only  used 
50 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  " 

for  a  disguise.  We  were  in  the  same  dormi- 
tory, and  one  night,  when  all  the  chaps  had 
gone  to  sleep,  he  dressed  up  in  these  things 
and  stood  where  some  moonlight  came  in, 
and  certainly  looked  jolly. 

Once,  as  an  awful  favor — me  being  smaller 
than  him,  and  not  fast  enough  to  run  away 
from  a  man — he  let  me  come  and  see  what 
he  did  when  bushranging  on  a  half-holiday 
in  winter.  " I  sha'n't  run  my  usual  fright- 
ful risks  with  you,"  he  said,  "  because  I 
might  have  to  open  fire  to  save  you,  and  that 
would  be  very  disagreeable  to  me ;  but  we'll 
trespass  a  bit,  and  I'll  shoot  a  few  things, 
if  I  can.  I  don't  shoot  much,  only  for 
food." 

He  made  me  a  mask  with  tinfoil  off  choc- 
olate smoothed  out  and  gummed  on  card- 
board ;  but  I  had  no  weapons,  and  he  said  I 
had  better  not  try  and  get  any. 

We  started  for  the  usual  walk.  Chaps 
were  allowed  to  go  through  a  public  pine- 
wood  to  Merivale  ;  but  half  through,  by  a 
place  where  was  a  board  which  warned  us  to 
keep  the  path,  Freckles  branched  off  into 
some  dead  bracken,  and  squatted  down  and 
51 


The  Human  Boy 

put  on  his  mask.  I  also  put  on  mine.  Then 
he  fastened  his  air-gun  together  and  loaded 
it,  and  told  me  to  walk  six  paces  behind  him 
and  do  as  he  did.  His  eyes  were  awfully 
keen,  and  now  and  then  he  pointed  to  a 
feather  on  the  ground,  or  an  old  nest  or  a 
patch  of  rum  fungus  or  a  crab-apple  still 
hanging  on  the  tree,  though  all  the  leaves 
were  off. 

Once  he  fired  at  a  jay  and  missed  it,  then 
fell  down  in  the  fern  as  if  he  was  shot  him- 
self, and  remained  quite  motionless  for  some 
time.  He  told  me  that  he  always  did  so 
after  firing,  that  he  might  hear  if  anybody 
had  been  attracted  by  the  sound.  It  was  a 
well-known  bushman's  dodge.  Once  we  saw 
a  keeper  through  a  clearing,  and  Freckles 
lay  flat  on  his  stomach,  and  so  did  I.  He 
knew  the  keeper  well,  and  told  me  that  he 
had  many  times  escaped  from  him.  We 
waited  half  an  hour,  and  turned  to  go  back 
a  different  way  from  that  of  the  keeper. 

Then,  where  a  glade  sloped  down  to  some 
water  and  the  grass  was  all  dewy  and  cov- 
ered with  mole-hills,  Freckles  went  to  in- 
spect a  trap  he  had  set  a  week  before.  He 
52 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  " 

was  collecting  skins  for  a  mole  -  skin  waist- 
coat, but  he  said  skinning  moles  was  one  of 
the  beastliest  tasks  a  hunter  ever  had. 
However,  there  was  a  mole  caught,  and  he 
skinned  it  and  wrapped  up  the  skin  in 
leaves  and  put  it  in  his  hat. 

Then  we  had  some  real  sport,  for  on  the 
other  side  of  the  glade  we  saw  rabbits  lop- 
ping about,  and  Freckles  stalked  them 
through  the  fern  while  I  waited  motionless, 
and  finally  he  shot  a  young  one.  I  wanted 
to  take  it  back  and  get  cook  to  do  it  for  us, 
but  he  said  I  was  a  fool. 

"  If  you  want  any  you  must  have  it  now. 
It's  about  .the  time  I  take  a  meal/'  he  said, 
"  and  that's  a  part  of  my  ranging  and  hunt- 
ing you  haven't  seen  yet." 

He  knew  the  country  well,  and  said  we 
were  in  one  of  the  most  carefully  preserved 
places  anywhere  about,  which  must  have 
been  true,  for  there  were  an  awful  lot  of 
pheasants  calling  in  the  glades.  But  Freck- 
les got  down  into  a  drain  and  showed  me  a 
hollow  he  had  scooped  out  under  a  lot  of 
ivy  where  it  fell  over  a  bank. 

"  This  is  one  of  my  caves,"  he  said,  ' '  and 
53 


The  Human  Boy 

here  we  can  feed  and  drink  in  safety ;  but 
yon  mustn't  talk  or  I  sha'n't  be  able  to  hear 
if  anything  is  stirring  in  the  woods." 

He  took  off  his  mask,  set  down  his  gun, 
and  lighted  his  spirit-stove. 

"  Skin  the  rabbit  and  cut  off  his  hind-legs 
while  I  make  tea/'  he  said. 

So  I  did,  and  he  held  them  over  the  lamp 
till  they  were  slightly  cooked  outside,  but 
not  right  through.  He  ate  and  drank  with 
his  ears  straining  for  every  sound.  Then  he 
took  the  rest  of  the  rabbit  and  removed 
all  traces  of  eating,  and  buried  everything 
we  had  left. 

"If  I  didn't,"  he  explained,  "some  keep- 
er's dog  would  find  my  lair,  and  make  a  row 
and  give  it  away,  and  the  keepers  would 
doubtless  lie  in  wait  for  me  and  catch  me 
red-handed.  You  can't  be  too  careful, 
because  every  man's  hand's  against  you ; 
which,  of  course,  is  the  beauty  of  it." 

We  got  back  without  anything  happening, 
and  I've  hated  the  sight  of  rabbit  pretty 
well  ever  since,  but  Freckles  said  the  juices 
of  animals  are  better  for  the  human  frame 
underdone. 

54 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  *' 

Well,  that  gives  you  an  idea  of  Freckles, 
and  the  affair  with  Frenchy,  which  I  am 
going  to  tell  you  about,  showed  that  he  really 
was  cut  out  for  bushranging.  Frenchy,  as 
we  called  him,  was  Monsieur  Michel.  He 
didn't  belong  entirely  to  Dunston's,  but 
lived  in  Merivale  and  came  to  us  three  days 
a  week,  and  went  to  a  girl's  school  the  other 
three.  He  was  a  rum,  oldish  chap,  whose 
great  peculiarities  were  to  make  puns  in 
English  and  to  appeal  to  our  honor  about 
everything. 

He  would  slang  a  fellow  horribly  one  day, 
and  wave  his  arms  and  pretty  nearly  jump 
out  of  his  skin ;  and  the  next  day  he  would 
bring  up  a  whacking  pear  for  the  fellow 
he'd  slanged,  or  a  new  knife  or  something. 
He  pretty  nearly  cried  sometimes,  and  he 
told  us  his  nerves  were  frightfully  tricky, 
and  often  led  him  to  be  harsh  when  he 
didn't  mean  it.  He  couldn't  keep  order 
or  make  chaps  work  if  they  didn't  choose ; 
and  Steggles,  who  had  an  awfully  cunning 
dodge  of  always  rubbing  him  up  the  wrong 
way,  and  then  looking  crushed  and  broken- 
hearted so  as  to  get  things,  which  he  did, 
55 


The  Human  Boy 

said  that  Frenchy  was  like  damp  fireworks, 
because  you  never  knew  exactly  when  he'd 
go  off  or  how. 

One  day,  dashing  out  of  class  with  a 
frightful  yell,  Freckles  got  sent  for,  and 
went  back  and  found  Monsieur  raving  mad. 
It  seemed  that  Freckles  had  yelled  too  soon 
— before  he  was  out  of  the  class-room,  in 
fact,  and  Frenchy  had  got  palpitation  of  the 
heart  from  it.  He  let  into  Freckles  proper- 
ly then.  He  said  he  was  his  "  bete  noire"  and 
"un  sot  d  vingt-quatre  carats" — which  means 
an  eighteen-carat  ass  in  English,  but  twenty- 
four  carats  in  French  —  and  "one  of  the 
aborigines  who  ought  to  be  kept  on  a  chain," 
and  many  other  such-like  things.  Freckles 
turned  all  colors,  and  then  white,  with  a 
sort  of  bluish  tint  to  his  lips.  He  didn't  say 
a  word,  but  looked  at  Frenchy  with  such  a 
frightful  expression  that  I  felt  something 
would  happen  later.  All  that  happened  at 
the  time  was  that  Freckles  got  the  eighth 
book  of  Telemachus  to  write  out  into  French 
from  English,  and  then  correct  by  Fenelon, 
which  was  a  pretty  big  job  if  a  chap  had 
been  fool  enough  to  try  and  do  it ;  and  Mon- 
56 


"Freckles"  and  "Frenchy" 

sienr  Michel  went  off  to  Merivale  with  a 
big  card  on  his  coat-tail  with  "Id  on  parte 
Franpais"  written  upon  it  in  red  pencil. 
This  I  had  managed  to  do  myself  while 
Frenchy  was  jawing  Freckles.  I  told 
Freckles,  but  it  didn't  comfort  him  much. 
He  said  there  were  some  things  no  mortal 
chap  could  stand ;  and  to  be  called  "  an  aborig- 
ine" because  a  man  was  born  in  Australia 
seemed  to  him  about  the  bitterest  insult  even 
an  old  frog  -  eating  Frenchman  could  have 
invented.  Happening  to  Mm,  of  all  chaps, 
it  was  especially  a  thing  which  would  have 
to  be  revenged,  seeing  what  his  views  were. 
He  said  : 

"I  couldn't  bushrange  or  anything  with 
a  clear  conscience  in  the  future  if  I  had  a 
thing  like  this  hanging  over  me  unrevenged. 
It's  the  frightfulest  slur  on  my  character, 
and  I  won't  sit  down  under  it  for  fifty 
Frenchmen." 

Then  he  said  he  should  take  a  week  to 
settle  what  to  do,  and  went  into  the  play- 
ground alone. 

Next  time  Frenchy  came  up  he  was  just 
the  same  as  ever  —  awfully  easy-going  and 
57 


The  Human  Boy 

jolly,  and  let  Freckles  off  the  Telemachus, 
and  offered  him  as  classy  a  knife,  with  a 
corkscrew  and  other  things,  including 
tweezers,  as  ever  yon  saw  —  just  the  knife 
for  Freckles,  considering  his  ways.  But  it 
didn't  come  off.  Freckles  got  white  again 
when  he  saw  the  knife,  and  said  : 

"  Thank  you,  Monsieur,  I  don't  want  your 
knife  ;  and  the  imposition  is  half  done,  and 
will  be  finished  next  time  you  come." 

Then  Frenchy  called  him  a  silly  boy,  and 
tried  to  make  a  joke  and  pinch  Freckles  by 
the  ear.  But  nobody  saw  the  joke,  and 
Freckles  dodged  away.  Then  Frenchy 
sighed,  and  looked  round  to  see  who  should 
have  the  knife,  and  didn't  seem  to  see  any- 
body in  particular,  and  left  it  on  his  desk. 
He  often  sighed  in  class,  and  sometimes 
told  us  he  was  without  friends,  unless  he 
might  call  us  friends ;  and  we  said  he 
might. 

When  he  went,  Freckles  told  me  he  con- 
sidered the  knife  was  another  insult.  Then 
he  explained  what  he  was  going  to  do.  He 
said  : 

"  I  shall  finish  the  impot  first,  so  as  not  to 
58 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  " 

be  obliged  to  him  for  anything,  and  then  I 
shall  stick  him  up." 

"  Stick  him  up — how  ?"  I  said. 

"It's  a  bushranging  expression,"  he  ex- 
plained. "  To  '  stick  up '  a  man  is  to  make 
him  stand  and  deliver  what  he's  got.  I  see 
my  way  to  do  this  with  Frenchy.  He  always 
goes  and  comes  from  Merivale  through  the 
woods,  as  you  know,  and  now  he's  up  here  on 
Friday  nights  coaching  Slade  and  Betterton 
for  their  army  exam.  Afterwards  he  has  sup- 
per with  Mr.  Thompson  or  the  Doctor.  There 
you  are.  I  wait  my  time  in  the  wood,  which 
is  jolly  lonely  by  night,  though  it  is  such  a 
potty  little  place  hardly  worth  calling  a  wood  ; 
then  he  comes  along,  and  I  stick  him  up." 

"It's  highway  robbery,"  I  said.  "You 
might  get  years  and  years  of  imprisonment." 

"I  might,"  he  said,  "but  I  sha'n't.  You 
must  begin  your  career  some  time,  and  I'm 
going  to  next  Friday  night.  I've  often  got 
out  of  the  dormitory  and  been  in  that  wood 
by  night,  and  only  the  chaps  in  the  dormitory 
have  known  it." 

Well,  the  night  came,  and  all  that  we 
heard  about  it  till  afterwards  was  that  about 
59 


The  Human  Boy 

eleven  o'clock,  or  possibly  even  later  than 
that,  there  was  a  fearful  pealing  at  the  front 
door  of  Dunston's,  and  looking  out  we  could 
see  a  stretcher  and  something  on  it.  That 
something  was  actually  Freckles,  though 
the  few  chaps  who  knew  what  was  going  to 
be  done  felt  sure  it  must  be  Frenchy ;  be- 
cause Freckles  is  five  feet  ten  and  growing, 
and  Frenchy  isn't  more  than  five  feet  six  at 
the  outside,  and  a  poor  thing  at  that. 

But  it  was  Freckles  all  right,  and  two 
laboring  men  had  brought  him  back,  and 
Frenchy  had  come  with  them. 

Not  until  five  weeks  afterwards,  when 
Freckles  could  get  up  and  limp  about,  did  I 
hear  the  truth ;  and  I'll  tell  it  in  his  own 
words,  because  they  must  be  better  than  a 
chap's  who  wasn't  there.  He  seemed  fright- 
fully down  in  the  mouth,  and  said  that  he 
could  never  look  fellows  in  the  eyes  again ; 
but  it  cheered  him  telling  me,  and  when  I 
told  him  he  was  thundering  well  out  of  it  he 
admitted  he  was.     He  said  : 

"I  got  off  all  right,  and  the  moon  was  as 
clear  as  day,  and  everything  just  ripe  for 
sticking  a  chap  up.  Then,  like  a  fool,  hav- 
60 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  " 

ing  a  longish  time  to  wait,  I  didn't  simply 
stop  in  shadow  behind  a  tree-trunk  or  some- 
thing in  the  usual  way,  but  thought  Fd  do  a 
thing  I'd  never  heard  of  bushrangers  doing, 
though  Indian  thugs  are  pretty  good  at  it. 
I  went  and  got  up  a  tree  which  has  a  branch 
over  the  road,  and  I  thought  I'd  drop  down 
almost  on  top  of  Frenchy  to  start  with. 
And  that's  just  what  I  did  do,  only  I  dropped 
wrong,  and  came  down  pretty  nearly  on  my 
head  owing  to  slipping  somehow  at  the  start. 
What  did  exactly  happen  to  me  as  I  left  the 
tree  I  never  shall  know.  Anyway,  Frenchy 
came  along  sure  enough,  and  I  dropped,  and 
he  jumped  I  should  think  fully  a  yard  in  the 
air  ;  but  that  was  all,  because  in  falling  I  hit 
a  big  root  (it  was  a  beech-tree),  and  went  and 
broke  something  in  my  ankle  and  something 
in  my  chest  and  couldn't  stand.  Consequent- 
ly, of  course,  I  couldn't  stick  him  up.  The 
pain  was  pretty  fair,  but  feeling  what  a  fool 
I  was  seemed  to  make  me  forget  it.  Anyway, 
finding  it  was  useless  to  think  of  sticking 
him  up,  I  tried  to  hobble  into  the  fern  and 
get  out  of  sight ;  and  finding  I  couldn't 
crawl,  I  rolled.  But  of  course  you  can't  roll 
61 


The  Human  Boy 

away  from  a  chap,  and  he  came  after  me, 
and  my  mask  fell  off  while  I  rolled,  and  he 
recognized  me. 

" '  Mon  Dieu!  it  is  the  boy  Maine  V  he 
said.  '  Speak,  child,  what  in  the  wide  world 
was  this  V 

"  I  disguised  my  voice  and  said  I  wasn't 
Maine,  and  that  he'd  better  leave  me  alone 
or  it  might  be  the  worse  for  him  yet.  But 
he  wouldn't  go,  and,  chancing  to  get  queer 
about  the  head  somehow  I  went  oif,  I  sup- 
pose, though  it  wasn't  for  long.  When  I 
came  to  he  was  gone,  but  he  rushed  back  in 
a  minute  with  that  rotten  old  top-hat  he 
wears  full  of  water  he'd  got  from  the  puddle 
in  the  stone-pit.  He  doused  my  head  and 
made  me  sit  up  with  my  back  against  a  tree. 
Then,  feeling  the  f rightfulness  of  it,  I  begged 
him  to  clear  out  and  let  me  alone.     I  said : 

"'You  don't  know  what  you're  doing. 
I'm  no  friend  to  you,  but  the  deadliest 
enemy  you've  got  in  the  world,  and  if  I 
hadn't  fallen  down  at  a  critical  moment  and 
broken  myself  I  should  have  stuck  you  up, 
Monsieur  Michel.     So,  now,  you  know.' 

"  He  said  to  himself,  i  The  poor  mad  boy 
62 


"Freckles"  and  "Frenchy" 

—  the  poor  mad  boy  —  I  will  ran  d  toutes 
j amies  for  succor';  but  I  told  him  not  to.  I 
began  to  get  a  rum  hot  pain  in  my  side  then, 
but  I  felt  I  would  gladly  have  died  there 
rather  than  be  obliged  to  him.     I  said  : 

".'You  called  me  an  "aborigine,"  which 
is  the  most  terrible  thing  you  can  call  an 
Australian-born  chap,  and  you  wanted  to 
pass  it  off  with  a  knife  with  a  corkscrew 
and  tweezers  in  it.  But  you  couldn't  expect 
me  to  take  it,  feeling  as  I  did.  Now  the 
fortunes  of  war  have  given  you  the  victory, 
and,  if  you  please,  I  wish  you'd  go.' 

"But  he  refused.  He  said"  he  wouldn't 
have  hurt  my  feelings  for  anything.  He 
seemed  to  overlook  altogether  what  I  was 
going  to  do  to- him,  and  asked  me  where  it 
hurt  me.  I  told  him,  and  he  said  it  was  his 
fault — fancy  that !  and  wished  he  was  big 
enough  to  carry  me  back.  I  kept  on  asking 
him  to  go,  and  at  last,  after  begging  my 
pardon  like  anything,  for  about  a  week  it 
seemed,  he  went.  But  I  heard  him  shouting 
and  yelling  French  yells  in  the  woods,  and 
after  a  bit  he  came  back  with  two  men  and 
a  hurdle.      They  presently  took  me  back, 


The  Human  Boy 

and  what  Frenches  said  since  to  the  Doctor 
I  don't  know.  In  fact,  I  didn't  know  any- 
thing for  days.  Anyway,  I've  had  nothing 
but  a  mild  rowing  and  very  good  grub,  and 
I'm  not  to  be  even  flogged,  though  that's 
probably  because  I  broke  a  rib  or  two,  not 
including  the  bone  in  my  leg.  But  I'm  all 
right  now,  and  I  think  it  was  about  the  most 
sporting  thing  a  chap  ever  did  for  Frenchy 
to  treat  me  like  that — eh  ?  I  shouldn't  have 
thought  it  was  in  a  Frenchman  to  do  it,  es- 
pecially after  I  told  him  what  I  was  going 
to  do." 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  that's  all  right,  but  what 
about  bushranging  ?" 

"  It's  pretty  sickening,"  he  said,  "but  I 
feel  as  if  all  the  keenness  was  knocked  out 
of  me.  If  a  chap  can't  so  much  as  fall  out 
of  a  tree  on  a  wanderer's  path  at  the  nick  of 
time  without  smashing  himself,  what's  the 
good  of  him  ?" 

"Besides,"  I  said,  "if  it  hadn't  been 
Frenchy,  but  somebody  else  of  a  different 
turn  of  mind,  he  might  have  taken  you  at  a 
disadvantage  and  jolly  well  killed  you." 

(i  In  real  bushranging  that  is  what  would 
64 


"  Freckles  "  and  "  Frenchy  " 

have  happened,"  admitted  Freckles.  "  As  it 
is,  I  expect  months,  perhaps  years,  will  have 
to  go  by  before  I  feel  to  hanker  after  it  again. 
And  meantime  I  sha'n't  rest  in  peace  till  Fve 
paid  Frenchy." 

«  How  ?"  I  asked. 

"Well,  I  believe  it's  to  be  done.  He's 
often  come  to  see  me  while  I  was  on  my 
back  in  bed,  and  he's  told  me  a  lot  abont 
himself.  He's  frightfully  hard  up,  and  a 
Roman  Catholic,  and  hopes  to  lay  his 
bones  in  la  belle  France  with  luck,  but  he 
doesn't  think  he'll  ever  be  able  to  manage 
it.  He  told  me  all  this,  little  knowing  my 
father  was  extremely  rich.  Well,  you  see, 
the  mater  wants  somebody  French  for  the 
kids  at  home,  which  are  girls,  and,  knowing 
Frenchy  bars  this  climate,  I  think  Australia 
might  do  him  good.  He's  fifty-three  years 
old,  and  it  seems  to  me  if  the  guv'nor  wrote 
and  offered  him  his  passage  and  a  good 
screw  he'd  go.  I  have  made  it  a  personal 
thing  to  myself,  and  told  the  guv'nor  what 
a  good  little  chap  he  is,  and  what  a  beautiful 
accent  he's  got,  and  the  thing  that  happened 
in  the  wood." 

e  65 


The  Human  Boy 

The  affair  dropped  then,  and  about  six 
weeks  after,  when  Freckles  was  getting  fit 
again,  he  walked  with  me  one  half-holiday 
to  see  the  place  where  he  was  smashed  up. 
The  bough  was  a  frightful  high  one  to  drop 
from  even  in  daylight,  also  it  was  broken. 
Freckles  got  awfully  excited  when  he  spot- 
ted it. 

"There!  there!"  he  said,  "that's  the 
best  thing  I've  seen  for  twelve  weeks  !" 

"  I  don't  see  much  to  squeak  about,"  I 
said,  "  especially  as  the  beastly  tree  nearly 
did  for  you." 

"But  can't  you  see  it's  broken  ?  That's 
what  did  it !  I  thought  I  slipped,  and  if  I 
had  I  shouldn't  have  been  made  of  the  stuff 
for  a  bushranger ;  but  the  wretched  branch 
broke,  and  that  is  jolly  different.  That 
wasn't  my  fault.  The  most  hardened  old 
hand  must  have  come  down  then.  In  fact, 
he  couldn't  have  stopped  up.  Oh,  what  a 
lot  of  misery  I'd  have  been  saved  through 
all  these  weeks  if  I'd  known  it  broke  in  a 
natural  sort  of  way  !" 

He  got  an  awful  deal  of  comfort  out  of 
this,  and  said  he  should  return  to  his  old 
66 


"  Freckles"  and  "Frenchy" 

ways  again  as  soon  as  he  could  run  a  mile 
without  stopping.  And  we  found  his  lead 
mask,  like  Ned  Kelly's,  just  where  it  had 
dropped  when  he  had  rolled  over  in  the  fern, 
and  he  welcomed  it  like  a  dog. 

That's  the  end,  except  that  his  father 
did  write  to  Dunston  about  Frenchy ;  and 
Dunston,  not  being  very  keen  about  Frenchy 
himself,  seemed  to  think  he  would  be  just 
the  chap  for  the  girls  of  Freckles's  father. 
Anyway,  he  went,  and  he  cried  when  he 
said  good-bye  to  the  school;  and  Freckles 
told  me  that  when  he  said  good-bye  to 
him  he  yelled  with  crying,  and  blessed  him 
both  in  French  and  English,  and  said  that 
the  sunny  atmosphere  of  Australia  would 
very  likely  prolong  his  life  until  he  had 
saved  enough  to  get  his  bones  back  to  France. 

So  he  went,  and  Freckles  went  after  him 
much  sooner  than  he  ever  expected  to,  be- 
cause the  keepers  finally  caught  him  in  the 
game  preserves,  sitting  in  his  hole  under 
the  stream  bank,  frizzling  the  leg  of  a  pheas- 
ant which  he  had  shot  out  of  a  tree  with  his 
air-gun  and  buried  seven  days  before.  And 
Dunston  wrote  to  his  father,  and  his  father 
67 


The  Human  Boy 

wrote  back  that  Freckles,  being  now  four- 
teen and  apparently  having  less  sense  than 
when  he  left  Australia,  had  better  return  to 
his  native  land,  and  go  into  the  wool  busi- 
ness, and  begin  life  as  an  office-boy  in  his 
place  of  business.  Freckles  told  me  that 
chaps  in  his  father's  office  generally  got  a 
fortnight's  holiday,  but  that  his  mother 
would  probably  work  up  his  governor  to  give 
him  three  weeks.  Then  he  would  get  a 
proper  outfit  and  track  away  to  the  bound- 
less scrub,  and  fall  in  with  other  chaps  who 
had  similar  ideas,  and  begin  to  take  life 
seriously.  He  said  I  might  see  his  name  in 
Australian  papers  in  about  a  year.  But  he 
never  wrote  to  me,  and  I  don't  know  if  he 
really  succeeded  well.  Fm  sure  I  hope  he 
did,  for  he  was  a  tidy  chap,  though  queer. 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 


IE  Corkey  minor  had  been  at  school  that 
term  the  thing  would  never  have  come 
about ;  but  Corkey  minor  was  always  one  of 
the  lncky  chaps,  and  just  when,  in  the  or- 
dinary course  of  events,  he  would  have  had 
to  begin  fagging  for  an  exam.,  something 
happened  to  his  right  lung,  and  he  had  to 
go  on  an  awful  fine  trip  to  Australia  in  a 
sailing  ship.  That  left  Corkey  major,  who 
was  a  mere  learning  machine  in  the  Sixth, 
and  Corkey  minimus,  who  was  ten,  and  in 
the  Lower  Fourth. 

It  began  like  this.  After  Bray  had  licked 
Derbyshire  and  Bethune,  which  he  did  one 
after  the  other  on  the  same  half -holiday, 
chaps  gave  him  "best,"  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  he  became  cock  of  the  lower 


The  Human  Boy 

school.  He  was  solid  muscle  all  through, 
and  harder  than  stone,  and  he  had  a  brother 
in  London  who  was  runner-up  in  the  ama- 
teur "  light-weight "  championship  two  years 
following.  Bray  fancied  himself  a  bit,  nat- 
urally, and  was  always  roaming  about  seek- 
ing fellows  to  punch.  But  once,  out  of 
bounds  in  a  private  wood,  a  keeper  caught 
him  and  licked  him,  which  was  seen  by  two 
other  fellows,  and  remembered  against  Bray 
afterwards  when  he  put  on  too  much  side. 

He  and  Corkey  minimus  were  in  the  same 
class,  because  Bray,  though  thirteen,  didn't 
know  much.  At  first  they  were  great  chums, 
and  Bray  bossed  Corkey  and  palled  with 
him ;  and  when  Browne,  the  under  mathe- 
matical master,  told  Corkey  minimus  that 
he  was  "the  least  of  all  the  Corkeys,  and 
not  worthy  to  be  called  a  Corkey,"  because 
he  couldn't  do  rule -of -three,  Or  some  rot, 
Bray  said  a  thing  that  Browne  overheard, 
and  got  sent  up.  But  by  degrees  the  friend- 
ship of  Bray  and  Corkey  minimus  cooled  off, 
and  the  matter  of  Milly  settled  it. 

The  Doctor  had  four  daughters,  and  Milly 
was  the  youngest.  Mabel  and  Ethel  held 
70 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

no  dealings  with  any  fellows  under  the  Sixth, 
and  Mary  had  something  wrong  with  her 
spine  and  didn't  count.  But  I  never  cared 
for  any  of  them  myself,  because  you  couldn't 
tell  what  they  meant.  Beatrice,  for  instance, 
was  absolutely  engaged  to  Morris,  for  he 
told  his  sister  so  in  the  holidays,  and  his 
sister  told  Morris  minor,  and  he  told  me  the 
next  term.  Morris  was  the  head  of  the 
school,  and  he  had  her  photograph  fixed 
into  a  foreign  nut  which  he  wore  on  his 
watch-chain.  But  when  he  left,  and  she 
found  out  he  was  gone  into  a  bank  at  £80 
a  year,  she  dropped  him  like  a  spider.  Mind 
you,  Morris  had  told  her  he  was  descended, 
on  his  mother's  side,  from  a  race  of  old  Irish 
kings,  which  may  have  unsettled  her.  Any- 
way, when  she  found  he  came,  on  his  fa- 
ther's side,  from  a  race  of  church  curates, 
she  wrote  and  said  it  was  off. 

But  there  were  other  things  that  upset  the 
chumming  of  Bray  and  Corkey  minimus 
before  the  Milly  row,  and  they  ought  to 
be  taken  in  turn.  First,  there  was  the  Old 
Testament  prize,  which  was  the  only  thing 
Bray  had  the  ghost  of  a  chance  of  get- 
71 


The  Human  Boy 

ting.  But  Corkey  beat  him  by  twenty-three 
marks  ;  and  Bray  said  afterwards  that  Cork- 
ey had  cribbed  a  lot  of  stuff  abont  Joshua, 
and  Corkey  said  he  hadn't,  and  even  declared 
he  knew  as  much  about  Joshua  as  Bray,  and  a 
bit  over.  Then,  on  top  of  that,  came  the  match 
with  neckties,  which  was  rather  a  rum  match 
in  its  way.  Both  of  them  used  to  be  awful- 
ly swagger  about  their  neckties,  and  each 
fancied  his  own.  So  one  bet  the  other  half 
a  crown  he  would  wear  a  different  necktie 
every  day  for  a  month.  The  month  being 
June,  that  meant  thirty  different  neckties 
each,  and  the  chap  who  wore  the  best  neck- 
ties would  win.  A  fellow  called  Fowle  was 
judge,  being  the  son  of  an  artist;  and  nei- 
ther Bray  nor  Corkey  was  allowed  to  buy  a 
single  new  tie  or  add  to  the  stock  he  had  in 
his  box.  At  the  end  of  a  fortnight  they 
stood  about  equal,  though  Corkey's  ties 
were  rather  more  artistic  than  Bray's,  which 
were  chiefly  yellow  and  spotted.  But  then 
came  an  awful  falling  away,  and  some  of  the 
affairs  they  wore  were  simply  weird.  The 
test  for  these  was  if  the  tie  passed  in  class. 
Then  the  terms  of  the  match  were  altered, 
72 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

and  they  decided  to  go  on  wearing  different 
things  till  one  or  other  was  stopped  by  a 
master.  Any  concern  not  noticed  was  con- 
sidered a  necktie  "  in  the  ordinary  accepta- 
tion of  that  term,"  as  Fowle  put  it.  At  the 
end  of  the  third  week  Corkey  minimus  came 
out  in  an  umbrella  cover  done  in  a  sailor's 
knot,  but  nobody  worth  mentioning  spotted 
it ;  and  the  next  day  Bray  wore  a  bit  of  blue 
ribbon  off  a  chocolate  box,  which  also 
passed.  They  struggled  on  this  sort  of 
way  till  Bray  got  bowled  over.  I  think 
Corkey  was  wearing  a  yard-measure  dipped 
in  red  ink  that  morning,  but  it  looked  rath- 
er swagger  than  not.  Class  was  just  ended, 
when  old  Briggs,  of  all  people — a  man  who 
wore  two  pairs  of  spectacles  at  one  time 
very  often — said  to  Bray  : 

"What  is  that  round  your  neck,  boy?" 
And  Bray  said  : 

"My  tie,  sir." 

Then  Briggs  said  : 

' '  Is  it,  sir  ?     Let  me   see  it,  please.     I 

have  noticed  an  increasing  disorder  about 

your  neck  arrangements   for  a   week  past. 

You  insult   me    and    you   insult  the   class 

73 


The  Human  Boy 

by  appearing  here  in  these  ridiculous 
ties." 

' '  It  sha'n'fc  happen  again,  sir/'  said  Bray, 
trying  to  edge  out  of  the  class-room. 

"  JSTo,  Bray,  it  shall  not,"  said  old  Briggs. 
"Bring  me  that  thing  at  once,  please." 

Bray  handed  it  up,  and  Briggs  examined 
it  as  if  it  was  a  botanical  specimen  or  some- 
thing. 

"  This,"  he  announced,  e '  is  not  a  necktie 
at  all.  You're  wearing  a  piece  of  Brussels 
carpet,  wretched  boy — a  fragment  of  the 
new  carpet  laid  down  yesterday  in  the  Doc- 
tor's study.  You  will  kindly  take  it  to  him 
immediately,  say  who  sent  you,  and  state 
the  purpose  to  which  you  were  putting  it." 

So  Bray,  by  the  terms  of  the  match,  lost, 
and  Corkey  minimus  won  with  the  yard 
measure. 

Then  the  feeling  between  them  grew,  es- 
pecially after  Bray  said  that  he  could  only 
pay  his  half-crown  in  instalments  of  a  penny 
a  week. 

Now  we  come  to  Milly.  You  see  she  was 
Corkey  minor's  great  pal  the  term  before, 
but  now  that  he  was  at  sea,  and  thousands 
74 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

of  miles  off,  she  chucked  him  and  turned  to 
Corkey  minimus.  That  shows  what  she 
was  really.  Anyway,  in  a  bad  moment  for 
young  Corkey,  she  told  him  he  had  eyes 
like  an  eagle's,  and  it  simply  turned  his 
head.  As  an  eagle's  eyes  are  yellow,  I 
couldn't  see  myself  what  there  was  to  be  so 
jolly  pleased  about ;  but  he  was,  and,  to 
show  you  what  a  chap  may  come  to  if  a  girl 
collars  him,  I  know  for  a  fact  that  Corkey 
minimus  tried  to  paint  a  picture  for  her. 
Whether  he  actually  succeeded  I  cannot  say, 
but  he  went  down  four  places  in  class,  and 
got  awfully  dropped  on  by  Browne. 

Then  came  that  attempt  of  Bray  to  cut 
Corkey  out,  and,  being  myself  a  tremendous 
personal  chum  of  Corkey's,  I  wished  he  had 
succeeded ;  but  he  didn't,  and  even  his 
fighting  didn't  take  Milly.  After  a  month 
of  giving  her  things  to  eat  and  so  on,  he 
said  it  was  his  red  hair  that  stood  between 
them,  and  told  Fowle  he  didn't  care  a  straw 
about  her;  but  from  the  way  he  went  on 
to  Corkey  minimus,  any  fool  could  see  he 
really  cared  a  lot.  The  chap  called  Fowle 
comes  in  here.  This  "obscene  Fowle,"  as 
75 


The  Human  Boy 

we  called  him  out  of  Virgil,  being  really  a 
term  in  a  crib  applied  to  harpies,  though  he 
would  have  run  if  a  mouse  had  squeaked  at 
him,  was  yet  responsible  for  more  fights 
than  any  fellow  in  the  school.  He  sneaked 
about,  asking  chaps  if  they  gave  one  an- 
other "best,"  and  when  at  last  he  found 
two  who  didn't  funk  each  other,  though 
they  might  be  perfectly  good  friends,  he 
never  rested  until  there  was  a  fight.  He 
got  kicked  sometimes,  but  not  enough. 
That  was  owing  to  the  fact  that  his  ham- 
pers from  home  were  most  extraordinary. 
They  came  on  Eoman  feast  days,  because 
he  was  a  Roman  Catholic  by  religion ;  and 
some  fellows  even  said  the  more  you  kick- 
ed Fowle  the  more  you  were  likely  to  get 
from  the  hampers.  That  was  rot,  of  course, 
and  a  jolly  suspicious  thing  happened  once. 
Newnes — a  chap  in  the  lower  Fifth — kicked 
Fowle  the  very  morning  before  a  hamper 
came;  and  that  same  evening,  after  prayers, 
Fowle  gave  Newnes  about  half  a  whacking 
big  melon,  and  the  next  day  Newnes  jolly 
near  died.  Fowle  swore  he  hadn't  put  any- 
thing in  the  melon,  but  it  is  bosh  to  say 
76 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

that  half  a  melon,  if  it's  all  right,  is  going 
to  do  a  chap  any  harm.  Anyway,  we  rather 
funked  Fowle's  hampers  afterwards. 

Well,  this  wretched,  obscene  Fowle  met 
me  one  day  licking  his  fat  lips  and  showing 
great  excitement.  So  I  knew  he'd  probably 
worked  up  a  fight ;  but  it  wasn't  that,  though 
something  worse.     He  said  : 

"Where's  Corkey  minimus  ?  Bray  wants 
him." 

( '  What  for  ?"  I  said.  I  may  mention  that 
I  am  called  Mclnnes. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,  he's  heard  something, 
and  he  says,  though  he's  sorry,  he's  got  to 
lick  Corkey." 

Fowle  smacked  his  beastly  mouth  as  if 
he'd  got  pine-apple  drops  in  it. 

"What's  Corkey  done?"  I  said. 

"  It's  about  Milly  Dunston.  Young  Cork- 
ey talks  jolly  big  with  her,  and  doesn't  even 
speak  civil  of  his  friends.  By  quite  an  ac- 
cident I  was  passing  through  the  shrubbery 
from  Browne's  house  to  the  chapel  yester- 
day, and  I  went  by  the  summer-house,  which 
is  out  of  bounds,  and  couldn't  help  over- 
hearing Milly  and  Corkey  minimus,  who 
77 


The  Human  Boy 

were  there.  And  Oorkey  distinctly  said 
that  Bray  was  as  fiery  as  his  hair,  and  that 
he  had  no  more  control  of  himself  than  a 
burning  mountain;  and  Milly  laughed." 

"  And  you  sneaked  off  and  told  Bray  ?" 

"As  his  chum  I  had  to." 

"Ah,  then  I  shall  tell  Oorkey  what  you 
heard,  being  his  chum." 

"I  shouldn't,"  said  Fowle.  "It's  only 
making  mischief.  Besides,  Bray  won't  take 
an  apology  now.  He  says  he's  stood  all  that 
flesh  and  blood  can  stand.  Those  were  his 
very  words.  In  fact,  I'm  looking  for  Corkey 
minimus  at  this  moment  to  tell  him  that 
Bray  wants  him  up  in  the  'gym.'" 

"  To  lick  him  ?" 

Fowle  smacked  his  lips  again. 

"  He's  brought  it  on  himself." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "I'll  give  the  message. 
You  can  go  back  and  tell  Bray  you've  told 
me." 

"I'd  rather  have  done  it  myself,"  said 
Fowle,  regretfully,  as  though  he  was  being 
robbed  of  tuck. 

"  Well,  you  won't,"  I  answered  him,  being 
pretty  sick  with  the  worm  of  a  chap  by  that 
78 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

time.     "  Yon  go  back  and  say  that  Corkey 
will  turn  np  in  ten  minutes." 

Then  he  cleared  out  reluctantly,  leaving 
this  tremendous  responsibility  entirely  on 
my  hands. 


II 


I  went  off  there  and  then  for  Corkey. 
It's  a  bit  of  a  jar  for  a  chap  to  get  a  mes- 
sage like  that  unexpectedly,  and  I  didn't 
know  what  advice  to  give.  Corkey  major 
was  no  good.  If  Fd  told  him  he  would 
have  blinked  through  his  goggles  and  have 
said  some  bosh — very  likely  in  Latin.  And 
Corkey  minor,  being  thousands  of  miles 
away,  it  looked  blue,  because  you  can't  ask 
anybody  but  a  chap's  own  brothers  to  take 
up  a  matter  like  this.  I  couldn't  lick  Bray 
myself,  or  I  would  have. 

The  next  minute  I  met  Corkey  himself, 
and,  from  an  awful  rum  look  about  him,  I 
thought  for  a  moment  he'd  had  the  licking 
already.  But  he  hadn't,  and  before  I  could 
speak  he  said  : 

"  Mclnnes,  I've  got  to  fight  Bray." 
79 


The  Human  Boy 

"My  dear  chap,  you  couldn't,"  I  began. 

"I  know," he  answered,  "but  I've  got  to. 
Things  have  happened.  Listen  to  this.  Fve 
just  left  Milly,  and  she's  in  a  frightful  bate. 
I  shouldn't  have  thought  a  girl  could  have 
got  in  such  a  rage  without  hurting  herself. 
Bray  told  Fowle  that  there  were  as  good  fish 
in  the  sea  as  ever  came  out  of  it  —  meaning 
Milly ;  and  Fowle  wrote  it  on  a  bit  of  paper 
and  dropped  it  where  Milly  was  bound  to  see 
it.  He  didn't  put  his  name,  but  she  knows 
his  writing.  Now  she's  pretty  well  mad, 
and  says  it's  a  disgrace  that  a  thick-necked, 
speckly,  stumpy  chap  like  Bray  should  be 
cock  of  the  lower  school.  Well,  I  said,  very 
likely  it  was,  but  I  didn't  see  how  it  could 
be  helped,  him  being  such  a  fighter.  Then 
she  tossed  her  hair  about,  and  said,  '  I  won't 
have  anything  more  to  do  with  the  lower 
school  at  all  while  he's  cock  of  it.'  Of  course, 
I  didn't  think  she  included  me,  being — well, 
her  greatest  pal  alive  since  Corkey  minor 
went.  So  I  said,  '  Quite  right ;  I  shouldn't 
look  at  them.'  Then  she  turned  round 
rather  suddenly  and  said  /  was  included. 
So  I  said,  '  I  should  be  only  too  glad  to  fight 
80 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

him  if  there  was  a  ghost  of  a  chance,  but 
there  isn't.  It's  no  good  pretending.  He's 
four  inches  taller,  and  miles  more  round  the 
chest  and  round  the  arms,  and  ages  older. 
In  fact,  he  could  lick  me  with  one  hand  tied 
behind  him.'  Then  she  said,  'The  days  of 
chivalry  are  dead/  which  she'd  got  out  of  a 
book,  of  coarse ;  and  she  added  that  she  was 
tired  of  all  boys,  and  that  a  chap  with  eyes 
like  mine  ought  to  have  more  '  devil '  in  him. 
Yes,  she  used  that  word.  I  said,  '  What  do 
you  want  me  to  do  ?'  And  she  said,  e  Oh, 
nothing.  I  wouldn't  have  a  hair  of  your 
head  singed  for  the  world  ;  only  I  thought 
that  it  might  interest  you  more  than  other 
people  to  know  I'd  been  insulted.  Of  course, 
if  it's  nothing  to  you — '  Then  she  stopped 
and  marched  away,  and  I  went  after  her  and 
asked  her  to  explain,  and  she  answered  that 
the  explanation  ought  to  come  from  me. 
She  said,  '  D'  you  ever  read  dragon  stories  ?' 
And  I  said,  '  Yes.'  Then  she  went  on, '  Well, 
in  all  the  ones  I've  read,  if  a  lady  asked  any- 
body to  kill  a  dragon,  the  person  didn't  say 
that  the  dragon  could  beat  him  with  one 
paw  tied  behind  it,  even  though  he  thought 
81 


The  Human  Boy 

so ;  but  he  jolly  well  went  and  did  the  best 
he  could/  Naturally,  after  that  I  saw  what 
she  meant,  and  I  said,  '  Oh,  all  right,  Milly ; 
of  course,  if  you've  been  insulted,  I  must 
make  the  beggar  apologize — or  try  to. '  '  Yes/ 
she  said,  cheering  up  like  anything;  fyou 
are  my  own  precious  champion,  and  I  love 
you/  I  tell  you  all  this  because  you're  my 
chum,  and  you'll  have  to  be  my  second.  And 
if  I  can  even  black  his  eye  before  he  settles 
me,  it  will  be  something." 

"  Well,  I  call  it  a  chouse,"  I  said.  "  She 
might  as  well  have  asked  you  to  fight  Blanch- 
ard  or  Sims.  Look  at  your  arms,  not  to 
mention  anything  else  ;  they're  like  cabbage- 
stalks." 

"Yes,  I  know  all  that,"  said  Corkey  mini- 
mus, "and  it  '11  be  rather  rotten  for  her  if 
he  kills  me.  But  the  thing's  got  to  be  done, 
and  the  sooner  it's  over  the  better." 

Then  I  suddenly  remembered  Bray's  mes- 
sage, and  told  Corkey.    He  seemed  surprised. 

"He  can't  lick  me  on  the  spot  if  I  chal- 
lenge him  to  fight  in  a  regular  way,  can 
he  ?"  he  asked,  but  rather  doubtfully. 

I  said  it  seemed  to  me  he  couldn't.     Then 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

we  went  up  to  the  "gym,"  where  Bray  was 
talking  to  about  four  chaps,  including 
Fowle. 

"  Oh,  you've  come,  you  kid,  have  you  ? 
You'd  better  not  keep  me  waiting  another 
time  when  I  send  for  you,"  he  began.  "  Now 
I'm  going  to  lick  you  for  cheek." 

"What  cheek  ?"  Corkey  minimus  said. 

"Fowle  heard  you  say  I  was  as  fiery  as 
my  hair." 

"Oh,  Fowle,  he  hears  a  lot,  I  know." 

"  Did  you  say  it  or  didn't  you  ?" 

"Yes,  I  did,  and  I  say  it  again;  and 
you're  a  dirty  bully  too." 

Bray  came  quite  close  to  Corkey  minimus, 
and  put  his  face  so  near  that  their  noses  were 
almost  touching,  like  cats  do  when  they're 
going  to  have  a  row  on  a  wall. 

"  Say  that  just  once  more  if  it  isn't  troub- 
ling you  too  much,"  said  Bray. 

"  I'll  say  it  as  often  as  you  like,"  answered 
young  Corkey,  keeping  his  eye  on  Bray's, 
"and  I'll  say  another  thing  too,  which  is, 
that  before  you  talk  so  big  about  me  being 
a  '  kid '  and  licking  me,  you'd  better  find  out 
first  if  I  give  you  i best.'" 
83 


The  Human  Boy  ■ 

"  Golly  !"  said  Bray,  grinning  like  mad, 
« don't  yon?" 

"No,  I  don't;  and  Fll  fight  you  prop- 
erly with  seconds  the  first  minute  we 
can." 

Oorkey  minimus  had  certainly  come  out 
of  it  fine  so  far,  and  I  only  wished  he  could 
fight  as  well  as  he  talked.  Of  course,  from 
Bray's  point  of  view,  it  was  the  best  thing 
that  could  have  happened,  because  now  he 
had  a  right  to  lick  Oorkey,  and  a  right  to 
lick  him  as  badly  as  he  could.  The  bell 
rang  a  minute  afterwards,  and  going  in  it 
was  settled  the  fight  should  come  off  next 
Wednesday,  that  being  a  half-holiday.  Part 
of  Merivale  Woods  skirted  the  cricket-field, 
and  as  the  second  eleven,  to  which  Bray  be- 
longed, wasn't  playing  a  match,  everything 
suited  very  comfortably.  Blanchard,  the 
cock  of  the  school,  agreed  to  umpire,  and  he 
and  another  chap  in  the  Fifth  very  kindly 
promised  to  carry  young  Oorkey  home  by  a 
secluded  way  if  he  was  too  much  smashed 
to  walk.  Fowle  seconded  Bray,  and  I  saw 
Bray  teaching  him  how  to  fan  with  a  towel 
and  spurt  water  over  a  fellow's  face  between 
84 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

the  rounds.  Of  course,  it  was  about  as 
good  fun  as  killing  rats  with  a  stick  for 
Bray. 


Ill 


Corkey  minimus  saw  Milly  once  or  twice 
before  the  fight,  and  he  said  he  couldn't 
make  out  whether  she  was  going  mad  or 
what.  One  minute  she  wanted  him  to  fight, 
the  next  she  implored  him  not  to ;  one 
minute  she  hoped  he  wonld  mutilate  Bray 
to  pieces,  the  next  she  blubbed  and  prayed 
him  if  ever  he  had  any  liking  for  her  to  give 
Bray  "best."  She  said  she  kept  dreaming 
of  him  brought  back  stark  and  stiff;  and 
then,  when  he  began  to  think  she  meant  it, 
she  called  him  her  f '  knight "  and  her  e '  hero  " 
and  her  "King  Arthur"  and  other  frightful 
rot,  and  actually  wanted  him  to  wear  one  of 
her  Sunday  gloves  under  ,his  shirt  at  the 
time  of  fighting !  Corkey  minimus  said  he 
very  likely  wouldn't  wear  a  shirt ;  and 
then  she  thought  he  might  hang  it  —  I 
mean  the  glove  —  round  his  neck  by  a  bit 
of  string ! 

85 


The  Human  Boy 

s(  Blessed  if  I  shall  ever  feel  quite  the 
same  to  her  after  this/'  said  Corkey. 

"It  seems  rather  rough  to  get  broken  up 
for  life  to  please  a  skimpy  girl/'  I  said. 
Then  he  burst  out  as  red  in  the  face  as  an 
apple,  and  told  me  he  would  not  hear  a  word 
against  Milly,  so  I  dried  up. 

There  were  three  days  before  the  fight, 
and  Corkey  minimus  trained  for  it,  and  gave 
away  his  pudding  at  dinner  in  exchange  for 
the  meat  of  the  chaps  who  sat  next  to  him. 
But  you  can't  get  your  muscle  up  in  a  day 
or  two  like  that,  and  it  only  made  him  aw- 
fully thirsty. 

The  day  came  at  last,  and  I  may  as  well 
go  on  to  the  fight  itself.  The  First  were 
having  a  big  match  on  our  own  ground,  so 
nobody  paid  any  attention  to  us,  and  we 
arranged  a  game  that  should  have  Corkey, 
Bray,  and  me  on  the  same  side.  Then, 
when  our  chaps  were  in,  we  three  sneaked 
away  into  the  plantations,  behind  some  holly- 
trees  and  a  woodstack.  Bray  arranged  all 
the  preliminaries  as  cheerful  as  a  bird,  and 
Blanchard  said  they  were  right.  They 
marked  out  a  ring  and  ran  a  string  round 
86 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

and  arranged  corners  for  the  seconds  ;  and 
I  saw  that  the  obscene  Fowle  had  towels 
and  bottles  of  water  and  a  basin — all,  of 
course,  for  Bray  between  the  rounds.  Cor- 
key minimus  was  rather  waxy  with  me  for 
not  bringing  the  same  for  him  ;  but  I'd 
brought  a  sponge,  which  I  know  is  a  thing 
a  second  chucks  up  in  the  air  when  his  man 
is  done  for  ;  and  I  explained  and  showed 
it  to  Corkey;  and  he  thanked  me  and  said 
he  supposed  that  was  about  the  only  thing 
he  should  want.  Blanchard  said  the  rounds 
were  to  be  two  minutes  long  each,  and 
Bray  grumbled  because  they  ought  by  rights 
to  be  three.  But  Blanchard  told  him  to 
shut  up  and  begin.  When  we  saw  Bray  take 
his  shirt  oif  I  told  Corkey  he  ought  to,  and 
he  did.  Then  Blanchard  laughed  and  said : 
"  By  gum  !  they  peel  rather  different  V 
Bray  was  like  a  barrel,  with  muscles  a  lot 
bigger  than  hen's  eggs  on  hi-s  arms.  Corkey 
minimus  seemed  to  be  all  ribs  somehow, 
with  arms  about  as  lean  as  rulers.  I  told 
him  to  keep  moving  about  and  try  and  puff 
Bray  a  bit  if  he  had  time,  and  he  said : 
" All  right,  I'll  try.  If  I  can  get  a  smack 
87 


The  Human  Boy 

at  his  face,  so  as  to  black  an  eye  or  some- 
thing, and  show  Fve  hit  him  before  he  does 
for  me,  I  don't  care." 

I  will  say  for  Corkey  minimus  that  he 
had  about  the  best  pluck  I  ever  saw  in  a 
chap.  He  was  quite  calm,  and  just  his 
usual  color;  and  when  Bray  tossed  him 
for  corners  Corkey  won;  and  Blanchard 
said  I  picked  the  right  corner  for  him. 
Then  he  told  them  to  fight  fair,  and  said 
"  Time !" 

I'd  prayed  Corkey  to  try  and  surprise 
Bray  at  the  very  start  if  he  could,  and  have 
a  hit  at  Bray's  face  the  moment  they  began. 
And  I'm  blessed  if  he  didn't  go  and  do  it ! 
Bray  began  fiddling  about  jolly  scientifically 
with  his  hands,  and  I  fancy  he  just  squint- 
ed down  to  see  if  his  feet  were  scientific  too. 
At  the  same  moment  Corkey  buzzed  round 
his  right  and  let  Bray  have  it  fairly  on  the 
nose.  Bray  jumped  and  looked  about  as 
much  surprised  as  if  he'd  been  struck  by 
lightning;  and  Blanchard  said: 

"First  blood  for  Corkey  minimus  V 

I  yelled — I  oughtn't  to  have,  but  I  did — 
because   to   see   blood   dropping   about   on 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

Bray's  chest  was  a  fine  sight.  He  sniffed 
and  went  for  Corkey  smiling.  The  smile 
was  the  beastliest  part  of  it,  for  I  hoped  he 
would  have  got  his  wool  off  a  bit  and  been 
wild.  But  he  wasn't,  and  when  he  began 
to  hit,  Corkey  got  flustered  and  swung  about 
like  a  windmill  and  caught  it  pretty  hot. 
Yet  he  jerked  his  head  so  jolly  quick  that 
he  didn't  get  more  than  about  four  smacks 
on  it  in  the  first  round,  though  his  body, 
which  was  white  by  nature,  was  pretty  soon 
covered  with  red  marks.  He  said  they  didn't 
hurt,  and  I  cleaned  him  up  and  blew  water 
over  him  at  the  end  of  the  round.  His  lip 
was  bleeding  like  mad,  but  luckily  inside, 
where  his  tooth  had  cut  it;  and  he  swal- 
lowed all  the  blood,  so  nobody  knew;  be- 
sides which  the  blood  wasn't  lost.  Bray 
flung  himself  down  in  his  corner,  and  Fowle 
looked  after  him ;  and  even  at  a  solemn, 
time  like  that  I  laughed,  and  so  did  Cor- 
key minimus,  because  Fowle  tried  to  be  too 
clever,  and  spurted  a  lot  of  water  out  of 
his  mouth  into  Bray's  eye.  Then  Bray 
told  him  that  after  the  fight  he'd  tie  him 
in  knots  and  kick  him,  looking  forward  to 


The  Human  Boy 

which,  of  course,  wrecked  Fowle's  enjoy- 
ment entirely. 

Blanchard  said  "  Time  !"  again  awfully 
soon,  and  I  saw  Bray  meant  settling  Corkey 
now,  because  his  reputation  as  a  fighter  was 
at  stake,  and  he  knew  Corkey  hoped  to  get 
through  three  rounds  with  luck.  So  Bray 
began  hitting  him  like  hammers,  and  though 
I  was  about  as  sorry  for  Corkey  minimus  as 
a  chap  could  be,  nobody  would  have  been 
able  to  help  admiring  the  way  Bray  hit.  It 
was  just  at  the  end  of  this  round,  when 
Corkey  had  been  knocked  down  once,  but 
got  up  again,  that  the  awful  rum  thiug  with 
Milly  Dunston  happened. 

Suddenly,  without  any  warning,  there  was 
a  noise  like  fowls  getting  up  a  hedge,  and 
she  rushed  out  from  behind  the  woodstack 
with  her  eyes  blazing  and  her  hair  streaming 
like  a  comet  in  a  bate.  She'd  been  running 
a  good  way,  I  should  think,  and  she  tore 
right  into  the  ring  straight  at  Bray,  and  not 
trusting  to  words  at  a  time  like  that,  and 
not  remembering  her  father  was  a  clergy- 
man, or  anything,  slapped  his  face  both 
sides,  and  jolly  hard  too.  Bray  swore  the 
90 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

horriblest  words  I  ever  heard  used  by  a 
chap,  because  she'd  given  him  more  in  half 
a  second  than  Corkey  could  have  in  a  year. 
Then  he  got  into  his  shirt  upside-down  and 
hooked  it  with  Fowle,  but  not  before  he 
heard  her  say : 

"  You  little,  fat,  red-headed  coward  to 
fight  and  try  and  murder  a  boy  half  your  age 
and  size !  I  wish  I  could  kill  you,  I  do.  It's 
shameful  to  think  you're  an  English  boy  at 
all  \" 

Then  she  turned  on  the  chaps  from  the 
Fifth,  and  told  Blanchard  he  was  a  disgrace 
to  the  school.  So  they  cleared  out  too ;  and 
then  she  cried  over  Corkey,  and  said  she 
would  rather  have  been  torn  to  pieces  by 
unchained  monsters  than  have  let  him  be 
mangled  like  he  was.  And  Corkey,  who  was 
pretty  well  dazed,  forgave  her,  and  told  her 
kindly  to  go  away.  And  she  gasped  and 
gargled,  and  went. 

I  took  Corkey  back,  and  one  or  two  things 
got  to  be  known.  It  came  out  that  Fowle 
had  told  Milly  the  place  and  the  hour  of  the 
fight,  but  only  after  she  had  sworn — on  some 
rotten  saint  Fowle  knew — that  she  would  not 
91 


The  Human  Boy 

tell  a  single  soul  about  it.  She  kept  her 
swear  all  right,  but  came  herself.  And  when 
Bray  got  to  hear  how  it  was  she  came — of 
course,  thinking  Corkey  had  told  her,  which 
he  would  rather  have  died  than  do — then 
Bray  tried  a  lot  of  Chinese  tortures  on  Fowle 
that  he'd  seen  at  a  wax-works.  And  chaps 
who  saw  it  said  that  Fowle  was  so  excited  at 
the  time  that  he  called  upon  about  twenty 
different  well  -  known  Bible  characters  by 
name  to  come  and  help  him  and  destroy 
Bray.     But  they  didn't. 

As  for  Corkey  minimus,  the  things  he  got 
from  Milly  after  that  fight  you  wouldn't 
believe.  There  were  bottles  of  stuff  to  rub 
bruises  with,  and  lozenges  and  grapes,  and 
some  muck  for  his  eye,  and  little  baskets 
of  strawberries,  and  jolly  books  and  rose- 
buds. She  told  the  Doctor  about  slapping 
Bray's  face,  and  wrote  a  long  letter  of  apol- 
ogy afterwards;  and  a  week  later  she  broke 
it  to  Corkey  minimus  that  she  was  going  to 
a  boarding-school  herself  next  term  ;  which 
she  did. 

When  Corkey  told  me  about  it  he  added: 
"And  she's  going  to  write  me  letters,  be- 
92 


Concerning  Corkey  Minimus 

cause  she's  said  several  times  that  there's 
only  one  chap  in  the  world  for  her  now,  and 
I'm  the  chap." 

"  I  shouldn't  think  she  could  change  her 
mind  after  all  that's  happened,"  I  said. 

And  Corkey  minimus  said  : 

"  I  bet  she  will  when  Corkey  minor  turns 
up  again,  especially  if  he  brings  rum  things 
with  him  from  Australia.  And  you  needn't 
repeat  it,  but  to  you,  Mclnnes,  as  my  chum, 
I  say  that  I  don't  care  how  soon  he  does 
come  back  either." 

Which  showed  that  there  was  more  sense 
in  Corkey  minimus  than  you  might  have 
thought. 

93 


The  Piebald  Rat 

IT  was  all  the  result  of  old  Briggs  asking 
the  Doctor  if  he  might  "instil  the  lads 
with  a  wholesome  fondness  for  natural  his- 
tory." That's  how  he  put  it,  because  I 
heard  him ;  and  the  Doctor  said  it  was  an 
admirable  notion,  and  would  very  probably 
keep  some  boys  out  of  mischief  on  half-holi- 
days. It  also  kept  some  boys  out  of  bounds 
on  half -holidays  ;  and  after  a  time  I  think 
the  Doctor  was  pretty  savage  with  old  Briggs, 
and  wished  he'd  stuck  to  his  regular  work, 
which  was  writing  and  drawing  and  such 
like  ;  because,  when  one  or  two  of  the  chaps 
really  got  keen  about  natural  history,  and 
even  chucked  cricket  for  butterflies  and 
beetles,  others,  who  didn't  care  a  straw 
about  it,  pretended  they  did  to  gain  their 
own  ends.  And  it  was  these  chaps,  if  you 
understand,  who  finally  made  the  Doctor  so 
94 


The  Piebald  Rat 

sick  with  natural  history  generally  and  old 
Briggs  for  starting  it. 

My  chum,  West,  began  the  rage  for  study 
of  "our  humble  relations,"  as  old  Briggs 
called  everything  down  to  wood-lice.  He 
let  it  be  generally  known  that  he  had  two  live 
lizards  in  his  desk  ;  and,  this  being  the  best 
thing  that  West  had  ever  thought  of,  the 
idea  caught  on  well.  I  had  a  dormouse  my- 
self, my  name  being  Ashby  minor,  and  Ash- 
by  major  kept  a  spider  pretty  nearly  as  big 
as  a  young  bird,  which  he  had  poked  out  of 
a  hole  in  the  playground  wall.  He  caged 
it  in  a  tin  match-box,  and  fed  it  with  blue- 
bottles and  wasps.  At  least,  he  got  blue-bot- 
tles and  wasps  for  it,  but  the  fool  wouldn't 
eat  them  ;  and  after  a  week  he  found  it  with 
its  legs  all  tucked  up  as  neatly  as  anything. 
Only  it  was  dead.  I  thought  the  match-box 
must  have  been  too  tight  a  fit  for  it,  but 
Ashby  major  did  not.  He  believed  there 
was  something  about  a  tin  match-box  which 
must  be  rather  poisonous  for  out-door  spi- 
ders. 

Then  chaps  went  on  collecting  till  it  got 
to  be  swagger  to  keep  big  live  things  in  your 
95 


The  Human  Boy 

desk ;  and  the  bigger  the  thing  the   more 
swagger  it  was. 

Maine,  generally  known  as  Freckles,  had 
a  couple  of  guinea-pigs  in  his  desk  for  a  week. 
Then  Mannering,  the  classical  master  in  the 
Fifth,  who  nrnst  have  had  a  nose  like  a  gim- 
let, smelt  them  at  prayers,  happening  to 
come  in  late  and  kneeling  down  by  Freckles 
at  the  time.  The  Doctor  didn't  make  much 
fuss  then,  because  that  was  just  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  business ;  only  he  said  a  desk 
was  not  the  place  for  guinea-pigs,  and  added 
that  a  chap  in  Freckles's  position  in  the 
school  ought  to  have  known  it.  He  let  the 
gardener  look  after  them  from  that  time 
forward.  But  Freckles  naturally  lost  all 
interest  in  them  after  the  gardener  had 
them;  because  a  guinea-pig  merely  as  a 
guinea-pig  is  nothing.  Anyhow,  it  was 
rough  on  him  to  be  landed  over  it,  because, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  guinea-pigs  have  no 
scent  worth  mentioning,  and  nobody  but 
Mannering  would  have  spotted  them.  After 
that  Gideon  and  Brookes  caught  a  blind- 
worm  one  foot  two  inches  long;  and  Gideon 
sold  his  half  for  fivepence,  so  Brookes  got 


The  Piebald  Rat 

it  all.  Nobody  knew  what  a  blind -worm 
likes  to  eat,  unfortunately,  and  it  died,  but 
not  for  a  fortnight.  Then  there  was  anoth- 
er scene  with  my  dormouse,  which  led  to  tre- 
mendous things.  There's  a  hole  in  a  desk 
where  the  ink-pot  goes  in,  and  one  day  my 
mouse  got  out  through  it,  having  climbed 
up  two  dictionaries  and  a  Greek  Testament 
to  do  so.  It  happened  old  Briggs  himself 
was  taking  the  Lower  Fourth,  which  is  my 
class,  and  I  hoped  it  would  be  all  right. 
But  he  didn't  seem  friendly  over  it,  and  I 
noticed,  when  he  told  us  to  find  the  mouse, 
he  put  his  feet  upon  the  rungs  of  his  chair. 
It's  a  rum  thing  about  old  Briggs  that  he 
doesn't  care  much  for  natural  history  objects 
while  they're  alive  ;  he  likes  them  dead  and 
dried,  or  stuffed  and  pinned  on  cards,  or  in 
glass  cases  all  labelled  and  neat.  My  dor- 
mouse gave  us  a  jolly  good  hunt  round, 
then  it  finally  tripped  over  a  lead-pencil  and 
got  its  tail  and  hind  legs  into  West's  ink.  So 
we  caught  it,  and  I  was  drying  it  with  a  piece 
of  blotting-paper,  and  old  Briggs  was  just 
telling  us  that  dormice  belong  to  a  genus 
of  rodents  called  Myoxus,  and  are  allied  to 
g  97 


The  Human  Boy 

mice,  though  they  have  a  squirrel's  habits, 
which  he  seemed  to  think  was  a  pity,  when 
Dunston  came  in.  The  Doctor  asked  par- 
ticulars, looked  as  if  he  could  have  jolly  well 
killed  my  mouse,  which  was  shivering  rather 
badly  owing  to  the  ink  on  its  hinder  parts, 
and  said  once  for  all  that  he  would  allow  no 
animals  of  any  kind  inside  any  of  the  desks 
or  in  school. 

Then,  unluckily,  as  an  afterthought,  he 
demanded  a  clearance  on  the  spot;  and  he 
was  pretty  well  staggered  to  find  the  result. 

u  I  will  ask  you,  Ferrars,  as  head  boy  of 
the  class,  and  one,  I  am  happy  to  think, 
above  any  of  this  childish  folly,  to  inspect 
the  desks,  one  by  one,  and  report  to  me 
where  you  find  indications  of  life,"  said  the 
Doctor. 

Ferrars  is  always  right  with  the  Doctor, 
chiefly  because  he  has  a  face  like  a  stone 
angel  in  church,  and  a  very  smooth  voice, 
and  a  remarkably  swagger  knowledge  of  the 
Scriptures.  He  is  also  a  tremendous  worker, 
and  will  go  into  the  Upper  Fourth  next  term 
as  sure  as  eggs.  It  was  jolly  awkward  for 
Ferrars  then,  because  he  happened  to  be  one 


The  Piebald  Rat 

of  the  keenest  natural  history  chaps  of  all, 
and  had  a  piebald  rat,  which  even  fellows  in 
the  Sixth  had  offered  him  half-a-crown  and 
three  shillings  for,  yet  he  would  not  part  with 
it.  So,  though  we  didn't  like  him  much,  we 
felt  almost  sorry  for  the  fix  he  was  in  now. 
Of  course,  we  thought  that  such  a  demon  on 
Religious  Knowledge  as  Ferrars  would  drag 
out  his  piebald  rat  right  away,  and  perhaps 
even  give  it  to  the  Doctor,  or  offer  to  sell  it 
for  the  alms-box ;  but  he  didn't.  He  got  up, 
rather  white  about  the  gills,  and  opened  the 
desks  one  by  one ;  and  a  jolly  happy  family 
it  was.  Only  the  Doctor  scattered  the  things 
to  the  four  winds,  till  there  wasn't  an  atom 
of  natural  history  left  in  the  whole  class- 
room except  Ferrars's  piebald  rat,  snug  in 
his  desk. 

First  Fowle,  who  goes  in  for  water  things, 
had  to  empty  his  jam-jar  of  tadpoles  out 
into  the  playground,  which  was  a  beastly 
cruel  thing  to  make  him  do,  because  they 
all  died,  still  being  in  the  gill  stage ;  then 
Freckles  was  sent  off  with  a  young  rabbit  to 
the  hay-field,  and  he  got  caned  too,  because, 
strangely  enough,   the   Doctor   hadn't   for- 


The  Human  Boy 

gotten  his  guinea-pigs  ;  and  Morrant's  two 
sparrows  were  let  go,  which  was  no  kindness 
to  them,  because  Morrant  had  cut  their 
wings  so  jolly  short  it  would  have  taken 
them  months  to  grow  enough  feathers  to  fly 
with,  and  meantime  a  cat  got  them  both  ; 
and  Playfair's  mole,  which,  by-the-way,  had 
been  queer  for  some  time,  owing  to  having 
no  earth  to  burrow  in,  was  ordered  to  be 
sent  to  the  cricket-field.  There  were  a  lot 
of  other  things,  but  Oorkey  minimus  scored 
rather,  because  his  goat-sucker  moth  laid  a 
hundred  and  fourteen  eggs  on  Todhunter's 
algebra  a  few  hours  before  it  was  let  free. 
Oorkey  minimus  says  a  goat-sucker  moth's 
nothing  worth  mentioning  after  it's  laid 
eggs,  but  the  eggs  turn  into  fine  caterpillars. 
The  few  things  the  Doctor  didn't  know 
what  to  do  with,  and  didn't  like  to  have 
killed,  he  said  must  be  given  to  the  gar- 
dener. He  thought  it  would  be  better  to 
put  my  mouse  out  of  its  misery,  and  turn- 
ed it  over  on  my  hand  with  a  gold  pencil- 
case,  and  said  it  had  probably  got  a  chill 
to  its  vital  organs  and  would  die ;  but  old 
Briggs  explained  that  it  might  live  if  put 
100 


The  Piebald  Rat 

in  cotton-wool  ;  so  the  gardener  looked  to 
it,  and  it  did  live,  and  I  took  it  home  at 
the  end  of  that  term,  and  have  it  still, 
though  it  is  getting  oldish  now,  and  has  lost 
half  its  tail.   "But  it's  a  good  mouse  yet. 

Of  course  the  extraordinary  thing  was 
Ferrars.  After  the  Doctor  had  gone,  old 
Briggs,  to  whom  he  had  whispered  some- 
thing before  he  went,  gave  out  that  his  nat- 
ural history  half-hours  would  be  suspended 
for  the  rest  of  the  term  ;  then  I  got  a  word 
with  Ferrars.     I  said  : 

"  However  did  you  have  the  cheek — you 
supposed  to  be  such  a  saint  ?" 

He  said : 

"  I  don't  know.  Something  came  over  me 
to  do  it.  Fve  got  a  jolly  peculiar  feeling 
to  that  rat.  It's  not  an  ordinary  rat.  Fm 
wrapped  up  in  it.  Even  my  respect  for  the 
Doctor  couldn't  stand  against  it.  I  know 
what  yon  chaps  think.  I  dare  say  yon  reck- 
on Fm  a  hound,  but  I  couldn't  help  doing 
what  I  did.  Somehow  that  rat's  a  sort  of 
'mascotte'  to  me.  Amascotte's  a  thing  that 
brings  luck.  All  my  best  luck's  happened 
since  I  had  it." 

101 


The  Human  Boy 

Of  course,  when  a  chap  goes  on  like  that, 
what  can  you  do  ?  I  didn't  understand  Fer- 
rars.  He  seemed  to  me  to  be  simply  talking 
rot.     So  I  said : 

"  Well,  it's  pretty  measly,  considering  the 
opinion  the  .Doctor's  got  of  you.  I  sha'n't 
try  to  score  off  your  rat,  because  I  know  it's 
a  jolly  fine  one,  and  I  like  it ;  but  Freckles 
or  somebody  will  very  likely  kill  it  after 
this." 

He  looked  in  a  fair  funk  when  the  dread- 
ful thought  of  having  his  rat  killed  came  to 
him.  Before  the  end  of  that  day  he  spoke  to 
every  chap  in  the  class  separately,  and  all 
but  three  promised  and  swore  not  to  lay  a 
finger  on  the  rat.  But  Freckles,  Murdoch, 
and  Morrant  wouldn't  swear.  Finally  he 
paid  Morrant  sixpence  and  so  got  him  over, 
and  Murdoch  he  let  crib  off  him  in  "prep." 
three  times;  and  Freckles,  who  was  an  aw- 
fully sportsmanlike  chap  really,  said  he  was 
only  rotting  all  the  time,  and  would  be  the 
last  to  do  a  classy  rat  like  Ferrars's  any  harm. 
In  fact,  he  said  he'd  much  sooner  kill  Fer- 
rars  himself. 

Mind  you,  though,  of  course,  it  was  simply 
102 


The  Piebald  Rat 

barbarous  for  Ferrars  to  think  that  his  pie- 
bald rat  could  have  any  effect  on  his  work, 
yet  he  proved  to  me  that  his  success  in  school 
and  his  great  popularity  with  the  Doctor 
dated  from  the  coming  of  the  thing.  When 
he  first  got  it,  it  was  a  mere  cub  -  rat,  so 
to  say ;  now,  though  not  a  year  old,  it  had 
turned  into  as  fine  a  rat  as  you  could  wish 
to  meet  anywhere.  In  appearance  it  had 
pink  eyes  and  a  white  head,  and  a  fairish 
amount  of  white  fur  about  the  body,  which 
got  thinner  on  its  stomach,  so  that  you  could 
see  the  pink  skin  through  to  some  extent. 
But  the  piebaldness  of  the  rat  was  the  great 
feature.  It  had  two  big  round  patches  of 
fur  like  the  common  or  garden  rat,  and  one 
small  patch  at  the  nape  of  its  neck  ;  and  in 
addition  to  this  it  had  one  large  patch  of 
beautiful  yellowish  fur,  such  as  you  chiefly 
see  on  guinea-pigs.  Its  tail  was  pink  and 
long,  and  quite  hairless. 

Ferrars  often  kept  back  good  things  at 
meals  for  it,  and  the  bond  between  them 
seemed  to  grow  rummer  and  rummer,  till  he 
let  the  rat  get  on  his  mind,  and  Wilson  said 
he  was  getting  dotty  about  it.  Which  I  think 
103 


The  Human  Boy 

was  true,  for  one  day,  going  into  the  class- 
room to  get  a  knife  from  my  desk,  I  saw 
Ferrars  with  his  rat  out,  talking  to  it.  He 
was  swatting  like  anything  in  play-hours  for 
a  special  Old  Testament  history  prize,  and 
he  had  the  rat  and  the  Bible  and  various 
books  of  reference  all  before  him.  Then, 
not  knowing  I  was  there,  he  spoke  : 

"I  must  win  it,  '  Mayne  Reid.'  Stick  to 
me  this  time,  old  chap,  and  see  me  through." 

He  called  his  rat  "  Mayne  Eeid  "  because 
that  was  his  favorite  author. 

And  "  Mayne  Reid"  seemed  to  under- 
stand, and  he  turned  his  pink  eyes  on  to 
the  open  Bible  and  walked  over  it.  Find- 
ing he'd  walked  over  the  ninth  chapter  of 
the  Second  Book  of  Kings,  Ferrars  got  ex- 
cited, and,  seeing  me,  said,  "By  Jove!  then 
I'll  learn  that  chapter  by  heart,  though  it  is 
so  long.  It's  good,  exciting  stuff,  anyway, 
and  I  bet  my  rat  walking  over  it  means  that 
there'll  be  a  question  about  Jehu  and  Jeze- 
bel." 

"  You'll  go  cracked  about  that  rat,"  I  said. 

"It's  part  of  my  life,"  he  answered.  "I 
know  it  seems  very  peculiar,  and  so  it  is, 
104 


The  Piebald  Rat 

and  I  don't  suppose  such  a  thing  ever  hap- 
pened before,  but  something  tells  me  my 
prosperity  and  success  is  all  bound  up  in 
that^at.  He's  a  familiar  spirit,  in  fact,  like 
Saul  had.  If  he  died  I  should  never  do 
much  more  good,  and  very  likely  stick  in 
this  class  for  the  rest  of  my  days." 

"  You'd  better  not  think  like  that,"  I 
said,  "because  rats  are  short-lived  things, 
owing  to  the  nasty  food  they  eat.  Not  that 
f  Mayne  Eeid '  has  nasty  food  ;  but  all  pink- 
eyed  animals  are  delicate,  and  you'll  have  to 
lose  him  sooner  or  later." 

Ferrars  didn't  take  warning  by  me,  but 
after  he  really  did  win  the  Old  Testament 
prize,  and  there  really  was  a  question  about 
Jezebel,  he  made  a  sort  of  idol  out  of  the 
rat,  and  some  chaps  declared  he  said  his 
prayers  to  it.  I  know  he  constantly  bought 
it  cocoa  -  nut  chips,  which  it  was  very  fond 
of.  He  trained  it,  too,  to  live  in  his  breast- 
pocket, and  I  often  saw  him  glancing  down 
in  class  just  to  get  a  glimpse  of  its  little  eyes 
looking  up  at  him.  That  taking  the  piebald 
rat  into  class  shows  the  lengths  Ferrars  ran. 
The  whole  thing  was  very  peculiar.  Some 
105 


The  Human  Boy 

chaps  said  there  was  a  strong  likeness  grow- 
ing np  between  Ferrars  and  the  rat ;  and 
certainly  his  thin,  white  face  had  a  rattish 
look  sometimes.  Other  fellows  told  him  his 
rat  was  an  evil  spirit,  and  would  end  by 
doing  him  a  bad  turn,  but  Ferrars  turned 
upon  them  and  jawed  them  with  such  fright- 
ful language  that  they  never  said  it  again. 
Meanwhile  the  Doctor  went  on  taking  to 
Ferrars  more  and  more,  and  there  seemed 
every  chance  of  his  getting  the  whole  Bible 
by  heart  before  he  left  Merivale. 

Then  came  the  end  of  the  affair  like  this. 
Ferrars  was  so  dependent  on  his  rat  now 
that  he  wouldn't  do  a  lesson  without  it,  and 
he  lugged  it  fearlessly  into  the  Doctor's 
study  at  those  times,  fortunately  rare,  when 
the  Doctor  took  our  class  himself  in  Script- 
ure. But  Ferrars  was  such  a  flyer  that  we 
all  got  tarred  with  the  same  brush  ;  and  the 
Doctor,  after  questioning  Ferrars  for  half  an 
hour  about  Bible  people  we'd  never  even 
heard  of,  and  getting  a  string  of  dead-right 
answers  out  of  him,  would  dismiss  us  all  in 
great  good  temper,  forgetting  that  he'd  only 
been  having  a  go  at  one  chap. 
106 


The  Piebald  Rat 

A  day  came  when  the  Doctor  left  us  for 
five  minutes  in  the  middle  of  this  class,  and 
while  most  of  us  had  a  hurried  dip  into  the 
plagues  of  Egypt,  which  was  the  business 
in  hand,  Ferrars,  who  knew  as  much  about 
the  plagues  as  ever  Moses  did,  just  got  out 
his  rat  and  gave  it  a  bit  of  almond  and  a 
short  breather  of  a  yard  or  so  along  the 
floor.  But,  the  Doctor  coming  back  sud- 
denly, he  had  only  just  time  to  pop  it  into 
his  pocket,  and  even  then  he  put  the  rat 
into  an  unusual  pocket  which  it  was  not 
accustomed  to,  and  didn't  like,  namely,  a 
trouser -pocket.  Ferrars  also  shoved  a 
handkerchief  down  in  the  pocket  to  steady 
the  rat. 

Then  I  saw  an  awful  rum  expression 
come  over  him,  and  he  grabbed  at  the 
pocket  and  his  mouth  fell  open,  and  his  face 
got  the  color  of  new  putty.  At  the  same 
time  I  saw  his  eyes  turn  to  a  big  bookshelf 
with  glass  doors  against  the  side  of  the  room. 

"  What's  the  matter,  Ferrars  ?"  said  the 
Doctor.     "  You  appear  unwell." 

"Nothing,  sir;  merely  a  little  passing 
sickness,  I  think." 

107 


The  Human  Boy 

"  Then  withdraw,  my  boy,  and  ask  the 
matron  to  give  yon  a  few  drops  of  brandy 
and  water.  Yon  need  not  dine  to-day,"  said 
the  Doctor,  very  kindly. 

But  Ferrars  wouldn't  withdraw.  He  knew 
"  Mayne  Keid"had  got  through  his  pocket 
and  down  his  trouser-leg  ;  he  also  knew  it  was 
now  behind  the  bookshelf,  and  might  re- 
appear at  any  moment.  So  he  said  he  was 
better,  and,  actually  !  that  it  would  be  a 
grief  to  him  to  miss  one  of  the  Doctor's  own 
lessons. 

But  afterwards,  when  the  rat  didn't  come 
out  and  the  class  was  dismissed,  Ferrars  was 
frightful  to  see.  His  hair  all  got  on  end 
somehow,  and  his  eyes  swelled  and  stuck  out 
of  his  head  like  glass  beads,  and  his  cheeks 
got  hollow.  He  ran  awful  risks  going  into 
the  Doctor's  study  that  day,  but  the  rat 
wouldn't  come  out,  and  Ferrars  looked  old 
enough  to  be  a  master  when  he  went  to  bed, 
though  only  eleven  and  a  half  really. 

"  One  of  two  things  has  happened,"  he 
said  to  me,  for  we  were  in  the  same  dor- 
mitory ;  "  either  it's  got  wedged  in  behind 
the  bookshelf  and  will  die  if  not  let  out,  or 
108 


The  Piebald  Rat 

else  there  was  a  rat-hole  there,  and  it  went 
down  and  has  joined  common  rats,  and  be- 
come a  sort  of  king  rat  among  them." 

"  Or  been  killed/'  I  said. 

"  No,  they  would  not  kill  it,"  he  answered. 
"Anyway,  to-morrow,  after  the  Doctor's  class 
is  over,  and  everybody  has  gone,  I  shall  stop 
and  make  a  clean  breast  of  it,  and  ask  him, 
for  the  sake  of  humanity,  to  have  the  book- 
shelf moved.  But  it's  all  up  with  me  if  the 
rat  has  lost  its  feeling  towards  me  and  won't 
come  back  ;  only  if  it  was  stuck  and  couldn't 
come  back,  that's  different." 

He  didn't  sleep  much  that  night,  but  he 
said  some  prayers,  which  was  a  thing  he 
didn't  often  do ;  and  of  course  he  was  pray- 
ing that  the  piebald  rat  might  be  allowed  to 
return. 

But  next  day,  after  the  Scripture  class,  in 
which  Ferrars  was  not  nearly  so  much  to 
the  front  as  usual,  and  got  regularly  mud- 
dled over  a  potty  question  about  Jacob,  the 
Doctor  saved  him  the  trouble  of  asking 
about  his  rat.  He — the  Doctor,  I  mean — 
had  been  jolly  glum  all  through  class,  and 
when  it  was  ended  he  did  a  rum  thing, 
109 


The  Human  Boy 

which  was  awful  to  see,  knowing  all  we  did. 
He  told  us  to  keep  our  places,  then  went 
to  the  fireplace  and  picked  up  the  shovel. 
From  the  face  of  it  he  removed  a  bit  of  news- 
paper, and  under  the  newspaper  was  "  Mayne 
Keid."  His  pink  eyes  had  gone  foggy,  and 
there  was  a  little  streak  of  blood  on  his 
mouth.  Otherwise  his  body  looked  all  right. 
"Now  here,"  said  the  Doctor,  in  an 
awfully  solemn  way,  "we  have  a  dead,  pie- 
bald rat.  There  can  be  no  outlet  for  error 
concerning  such  a  rat  as  this.  To  have  seen 
such  a  rat  is  to  remember  it.  Already  three 
classes  have  been  before  me  to-day,  but  no- 
body knew  anything  about  this  animal.  That 
it  was  a  tame  rat  its  fatness  and  sleekness 
testify.  Moreover,  the  piebald  rat  is  an  out- 
come of  artificiality.  A  wild  rat  in  a  state  of 
nature  is  brown  or  black,  as  the  case  may 
be.  This  rat,  then,  had  an  owner,  and  that 
owner  brought  it  into  my  study — my  study! 
— and  suffered  it  to  escape  here.  That  I  do 
well  to  be  angry  you  will  the  more  easily 
understand  when  I  tell  you  that  the  un- 
savory creature  was  upon  my  desk  last 
night,  and  has  scratched  and  even  eaten 
110 


The  Piebald  Rat 

some  papers  whereon  were  notes  for  my 
next  sermon.  It  was  discovered  this  morn- 
ing by  one  of  the  domestics.  She,  seeing 
some  object  moving  npon  my  desk,  struck 
with  the  broom-handle,  and  destroyed  this 
rat.  Now  let  there  be  no  prevarication  or 
evasion  of  the  questions  I  am  going  to  put 
to  you.  First,  I  wish  to  know  if  this  rat 
belongs,  or  rather  belonged,  to  any  among 
you ;  and,  secondly,  I  desire  to  learn  whether, 
supposing  the  rat  be  not  the  property  of  any 
present,  you  happen  to  know  whose  property 
it  is,  or  rather  was  ?" 

I  stole  a  look  at  Ferrars,  and  he  appeared 
so  frightful  to  see,  that  for  some  reason  I 
thought  I'd  try  and  help  him.  So,  like  a 
fool,  I  was  just  going  to  speak  when  young 
Corkey  minimus  did.     He  said  : 

"  Please,  sir,  it  might  be  a  foreign  sort  of 
rat  that  came  over  in  that  box  of  pineapples 
and  things  that  Ashby  major  had  sent  him 
from  the  West  Indies." 

"When  I  desire  your  aid  in  the  eluci- 
dation of  this  problem  I  will  apply  for  it, 
Corkey  minimus/'  answered  the  Doctor,  so 
Corkey  dried  up. 

Ill 


The  Human  Boy 

Then,  in  a  sort  of  voice  that  was  strange 
to  us,  and  seemed  to  come  from  his  stomach 
or  somewhere  new,  Ferrars  spoke,  and  I 
never  saw  a  chap  look  so  ghastly.  His  eyes 
were  fixed  on  the  rat,  and  he  came  forward 
slowly. 

"  Please,  sir,  it  was  my  rat,"  he  said. 

"  Yours,  Ferrars  !  You  to  disobey  !  You, 
of  all  boys,  to  set  my  orders  at  defiance  !" 

"  It  wasn't  an  ordinary  rat,  sir." 

"I  can  see  what  sort  of  rat  it  was,  sir,  for 
myself,"  thundered  the  Doctor.  "  This  it 
is  to  consider  a  boy,  to  devote  thought  to 
him,  to  particularly  commend  him  for  his 
theological  knowledge." 

"  I  don't  take  any  credit  for  knowing  any- 
thing now,  sir.   It  was  the  rat  as  much  as  me." 

"Robert  Ferrars  !"  said  the  Doctor,  in  his 
caning  voice,  "  you  are  now  adding  wicked 
buffoonery  to  an  act  in  itself  sufficiently  dis- 
reputable !" 

"  I  can't  explain,  sir  ;  I  don't  mean  any 
buffoonery.  That  rat  was  more  to  me  than 
you'd  think.  It — it  did  help  me  somehow, 
and  now  it's  dead  it  wouldn't  be  sportsman- 
like to  it  to  say  not.  And  if  you'll  let  me 
112 


The  Piebald  Rat 

b-bury  it  properly,  Fll  be  very  thankful  to 

you." 

The  Doctor  looked  at  Ferrars  awfully  close 
during  this  speech. 

"Either  you  are  lying/'  he  said,  "or  you 
suffer  from  some  hysterical  and  neurotic 
condition,  Robert  Ferrars,  which  I  have 
neither  suspected  nor  discovered  until  this 
moment." 

Then  he  told  us  to  go ;  but  Ferrars  he 
kept  for  half  an  hour ;  and  when  Ferrars 
came  in  to  dinner  I  saw  he'd  been  blubbing. 

He  explained  to  me  after  we'd  gone  to 
bed.     He  said  : 

"  No,  he  didn't  cane  me  or  anything.  He 
just  talked,  and  told  me  a  lot  about  several 
things  I  didn't  know,  and  said  that  familiar 
spirits  were  specially  barred  in  the  Bible. 
I  never  thought  he'd  have  even  tried  to  un- 
derstand me  :  but  he  did,  and  he  quite  saw 
my  side  about  the  rat.  He  said  kind  words 
over  it,  too,  and  was  sorry  it  was  dead.  And 
Fve  got  to  see  Doctor  Barnes  to-morrow  too, 
though,  of  course,  it's  only  having  my  rat 
on  my  mind  that's  upset  me.  And  he  let 
me  have  it  to  b-bury  gladly." 
h  113 


The  Human  Boy 

"  Where  shall  you  arrange  the  rat  ?"  I 
said. 

"  I'm  sending  it  home  in  a  stays-box  that 
Jane  gave  me.  Fve  written  to  my  sister 
where  to  bury  it.  Jane  it  was  who  killed 
it.  She  cried  like  anything  when  I  told 
her  what  '  Mayne  Keid '  was  to  me.  But 
he's  in  the  book -post  by  now,  beautifully 
done  up  in  shavings  and  fresh  geranium 
leaves.  It's  no  good  talking  any  more. 
Only  I  will  say  that  if  he  was  a  familiar 
spirit,  he  was  a  jolly  good  one,  very  differ- 
ent to  the  sort  barred  in  the  Scriptures.  I 
don't  know  how  I'll  get  on  in  the  exams, 
now.     I  wish  I  was  dead,  too." 

Then  he  sniffed  a  bit,  and  went  to  sleep. 
114 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

THERE'S  more  stuff  torked  about  fag- 
ging at  school  than  anything  else  in  the 
world,  as  far  as  I  can  see ;  and  being  the 
smalest  boy  but  two  at  Dunston's,  and  a  fag 
myself,  I  ought  to  know.  Of  corse,  fags  do 
get  it  pretty  hot  sometimes  if  they  happen 
to  fag  for  a  beast,  but  big  fellows  aren't 
beasts  to  small  ones  as  a  general  thing.  I'm 
sure  Bradwell  was  the  best  chap  that  ever 
came  to  Dunston's,  and  when  he  was  ex- 
pelled over  the  seege  in  the  Wing  Dormatery 
— him  and  Trelawny — I  felt  frightful.  I'm 
Watson  minor  myself,  my  brother  being 
Watson  major,  one  of  the  reserves  for  the 
second  eleven  and  captain  of  the  third. 

The  thing  I'm  going  to  write  out  happened 

just  before  the  seege,  and  was  all  over  before 

that ;  and  it  shows  what  a  fag  can  do.     It 

also  shows  what  a  jolly  good  thing  it  is  for 

115 


The  Human  Boy 

big  fellows  to  treat  fags  well,  and  give  them 
odds  and  ends  so  as  to  get  their  affecksun. 
If  I  hadn't  felt  what  I  did  to  Bradwell,  I 
shouldn't  have  run  the  awful  risks  I  did  for 
him.  What  I  did  certinly  ruined  a  great 
project  of  Bradwell's,  and  upsett  him  a  good 
bit  at  the  time.  But  he  said  afterwards, 
when  the  blow  had  fallen,  and  when  he  could 
look  back  and  think  of  it  without  smacking 
my  head,  that  I  had  ment  well.  I  remem- 
ber his  very  words,  for  that  matter.  He 
said,  "Your  intenshuns  were  all  right — I 
will  say  that — but  you've  ruined  my  life." 
No  chap  could  say  farer  than  that ;  and, 
mind  you,  I  did  ruin  his  life  in  a  way.  I've 
heard  many  fellows  say  Bradwell  was  a 
bounder  by  birth ;  but  he  never  was  to 
me. 

Well,  Bradwell  had  a  great  admeration 
for  Mabel  Dunston,  the  Doctor's  youngest 
daughter  but  one,  and  she  had  an  equal 
great  admeration  for  him,  for  two  terms. 
Bradwell,  although  a  great  sportsman  in 
other  ways,  was  fond  of  girls.  If  he  passed 
a  school  of  them  he  would  look  awfully  rum 
and  reddish  in  the  face  an'  watery  in  the 
116 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

eyes.  Once,  going  with  him  to  the  playing- 
field  for  a  football  match,  he  made  the  dis- 
tance half  a  mile  longer  by  going  up  a  side- 
street  to  avoid  the  high-school  girls;  and  I 
asked  him  why,  and  he  said  it  was  cheek,  but 
told  me  all  the  same.  He  said,  "Yon  can't 
meet  women  got  np  like  this."  Bradwell  has 
frightfully  thin  calves  to  his  legs  when  seen 
in  "knickers,"  though  he  is  the  best  goal- 
keeper that  was  ever  known  at  Dunston's. 
Of  course,  his  affair  with  Mabel  Dunston 
would  never  have  got  to  be  known  by  me  but 
for  my  great  use  to  Bradwell  in  carrying 
notes.  Being  in  the  Doctor's  house  that 
term  I  was  easily  able  to  do  this,  and  there 
was  a  jar  of  green  stuff  in  the  hall  where  she 
told  me  to  leave  the  notes,  which  I  did.  She 
was  fifteen,  I  believe,  or  else  sixteen,  but 
well  on  in  years  anyway,  and  a  few  months 
older  than  Bradwell.  It  was  his  general 
brillance  won  her,  for  he  could  do  anything, 
and  his  father  had  plenty  of  money,  being  a 
man  like  Whitely's  in  London,  only  in  the 
North  of  England.  Bradwell  drew  almost 
as  well  as  pictures  in  books,  and  he  used  to  il- 
lustrate the  Latin  grammar  for  his  special 
117 


The  Human  Boy 

chnms.  There's  a  part  of  the  Latin  gram- 
mar called  Syntax,  which  I  haven't  come  to 
yet  myself,  but  it  has  rather  rummy  things 
in  it,  with  both  the  Latin  and  English  of 
them.  And  Bradwell  used  to  illustrate  these 
things;  and  he  illustrated  two  in  my  gram- 
mar ont  of  pner  kindness  to  me.  One  was, 
"Balbus  is  crowning  the  boy's  head  with  a 
garland";  and  the  other  was,  "A  snake  ap- 
peared to  Sulla  while  sacrifising";  and  you 
never  saw  anything  better.  They  were  done 
on  the  margin  in  ink,  and  the  snake  appear- 
ing to  Sulla  was  about  the  queerest  and  best 
thing  even  seen  in  a  Latin  grammar. 

I  have  to  tell  you  this  because  such  a  lot 
happened  owing  to  it. 

Now  Browne  took  my  class,  which  is  the 
lowest  in  the  school,  and  I  am  seventh  in 
it.  And  I  gradually  got  to  hate  Browne, 
because  Bradwell  did,  and  for  other  reesons 
of  my  own  to.  Browne  was  said  to  be  only 
twenty -two,  and  he  looked  younger  than 
many  of  the  chaps,  his  moustashe  being 
whitish  and  invisibel  to  the  eye.  He  wore 
necktyes  which  I  remember  hearing  Mathers 
say  were  an  insult  to  nature,  and  would 
118 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

have  made  a  rainbow  curl  Tip  and  faint.  We 
always  noticed,  at  arithmetic  times,  that 
Browne,  if  he  got  a  stumper,  would  put  up 
the  lid  of  his  private  desk  and  hide  behind 
it — of  course,  looking  the  thing  up  in  his 
crib.  Then  he  would  wander  round,  as  if 
by  accident,  to  the  chap  and  do  the  sum  off 
quick  while  he  remembered  it.  Bradwell 
always  hated  him ;  and  when  he  found  that 
Browne  was  very  friendly  with  Mabel  and 
Mabel  was  very  friendly  with  Browne,  he 
hated  him  far,  far  wurse. 

Bradwell  and  this  girl  had  a  row  in  the 
shrubbery  at  the  back  of  the  chapel,  and 
I,  being  in  the  gardener's  potting -shed  at 
the  time,  feeding  a  cattipiller  of  mine,  heard 
it.     Bradwell  said : 

"Fm  not  blind,  Mabel,  Fve  seen  it  going 
on  ever  since  last  term.  You  read  his  beast- 
ly books,  and  leave  rosebuds  with  scented 
verbena  leaves  round  them  >  in  that  stone 
urn  at  the  gate  when  he  comes  down  from 
his  house  to  class." 

And  she  said : 

"And  why  shouldn't  I?  You  must  re- 
member, please,  that  I  am  my  own  mistress. 
119 


The  Human  Boy 

Besides,  the  intelligents  of  a  grown-up  man 
is  very  refreshing." 

For  some  reason  Brad  well  didn't  like  this. 
His  voice  squeaked  up  into  his  head  in  a 
rather  rum  way  when  he  answered  : 

"  D'  you  call  him  a  man  ?  He  hasn't  got 
a  muscle  on  him  ;  and  he  doesn't  know  more 
than  enough  to  teach  the  kids." 

"That's  merely  mean  jellousy,"  said  Ma- 
bel. "  Of  course,  he  doesn't  talk  to  you,  or 
show  you  what  is  in  him.  But  he  tells  me 
all  about  his  secret  life,  and  very  butiful  it 
is.     He  is  a  jenius,  in  fact." 

si  If  it  comes  to  that,  what  can  he  do  ?" 
said  Brad  well,  awfully  clevverly.  "  Can  he 
draw  ?" 

"  No,  he  doesn't  draw." 

"  Oh  !  can  he  sing  ?" 

"No." 

"  Can  he  play  the  piano  ?" 

"No." 

Now  all  of  these  things  Brad  well  could 
do  to  perfecksun,  so  he  got  cheerfuller  and 
cheerfnller. 

66  What  can  he  do,  then,  besides  jaw  the 
kids  and  always  sneak  to  the  Doctor  ?" 
120 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

"  I  never  saw  such  jellousy  as  this/'  said 
Mabel ;  "  but  if  you  must  know  Fll  tell  you 
what  he  can  do :  he  can  write  poetry  out  of 
his  own  head,  and  he  has  got  a  solid  book  of 
it  reddy  to  print  some  day — there  !" 

I  suppose  Bradwell  couldn't  write  poetry. 
Anyway,  he  got  very  down  in  the  face  at 
this.  He  didn't  say  anything — appeering  to 
be  frightfully  shocked  at  what  he'd  heard. 
Then  Mabel  said  : 

"  When  you  can  quote  Browning  and  Byron 
and  Shelley,  and  write  poems  yourself,  it  will 
be  soon  enough  to  sneer  at  Mr.  Browne." 

"  You  love  him,"  said  Bradwell,  in  a  very 
tragik  voice. 

"  I  don't  love  anybody  but  my  own  fam- 
ily," said  Mabel ;  "  but  I  admire  him,  and  I 
admire  his  poetry,  which  is  very  much  out 
of  the  common  indeed." 

"  It's  all  over  then,  I  suppose,"  said 
Bradwell. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  she  re- 
plied to  him.  "A  thing  that  has  never 
begun  can't  be  all  over";  which  words  of 
Mabel's  seemed  to  knock  the  heart  out  of 
Bradwell. 

121 


The  Human  Boy 

Then  the  gardener  came  along,  and  1 
didn't  hear  anything  else.  Of  corse,  I 
couldn't  help  hearing  what  I  had  done, 
though  I  tried  hard  not  to,  and  kept  feed- 
ing my  catterpeller  like  anything  all  the 
time. 

Two  days  after  I  had  to  carry  another 
note  to  Mabel,  and  found  one  waiting  for 
Bradwell  in  the  usual  place ;  so  they  must 
have  made  it  up.  Then  came  the  beginning 
of  my  misf orchunes  with  Browne.  He  found 
the  snake  appeering  to  Sulla  in  my  Latin 
grammar,  and  called  me  up  and  said  he 
knew  very  well  I  hadn't  drawn  it  myself, 
but  wanted  to  know  who  had.  He  said  it 
was  wrong  to  the  Doctor  to  ruin  our  books, 
and  that  he  had  seen  in  several  different 
books  the  same  snake,  evidently  done  by  the 
same  boy,  owing  to  them  being  so  much 
similar. 

But  the  very  identical  thing  had  hap- 
pened in  another  class — to  Steggles,  Brad- 
well  having  drawn  him  the  same  picture  ; 
and  knowing  what  Steggles  said,  being  a 
chap  who  is  frightfully  cunning,  I  said  the 
same  now  to  Browne.  I  said  I  left  the  book 
122 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

on  my  desk,  and  somebody  came  along  and 
done  it  while  I  was  out  of  the  room.  Browne 
seemed  inclined  not  to  believe  this.  Any- 
way, he  took  the  Latin  grammar  away  with 
him.  But  I  heard  no  more  about  it  till  the 
next  evening,  when  I  wanted  the  book  in 
prep.  Eemembering  Browne  had  it,  I  went 
off  to  his  study  and  knocked  and  walked  in. 

Browne  wasn't  there  for  the  moment,  and 
the  room  was  empty.  I  took  the  opportu- 
nity to  look  at  a  rather  butiful  tobacco-jar 
of  Browne's  which  I  have  seen  at  a  distance 
on  his  mantlepiece  many  times.  Passing 
his  table  to  get  to  it,  I  chanced  to  glance 
there,  and  juge  of  my  surprise  when  the 
first  words  I  saw  at  the  top  of  a  big  sheet  of 
paper  were,  "To  Mabel"  !  Underneeth  was 
a  lot  of  writing,  and  the  whole  table  seemed 
to  be  littered  with  paper  covered  with  small 
bits  of  separate  writing,  much  of  it  scratched 
out  and  done  over  again.  But  the  piece 
with  "  To  Mabel  "  at  the  top  was  all  buti- 
ful and  clean,  without  anything  scratched, 
being,  I  suppose,  the  result  of  all  the  other 
bits  put  together  and  neetly  copied  out. 

Well,  there  I  was  with  my  duty  towards 
123 


The  Human  Boy 

Bradwell  as  his  fag.  Browne  had  evidently 
done  a  verse  out  of  his  own  head  for  Mabel 
Dunston,  and  had  written  it  in  this  butifnl 
style,  on  thick  white  paper,  to  send  to  her. 
I  felt  if  she  got  it,  knowing  what  she'd  said 
to  Bradwell  about  Browne,  that  it  was  certin 
she  would  abbandon  Bradwell,  him  not  be- 
ing any  good  at  poems.  I  wouldn't  have 
done  it  for  anybody  else  in  the  world  hut 
Bradwell ;  I  wouldn't  have  done  it  at  all 
if  I  had  known  what  the  end  of  it  was 
going  to  be  ;  but,  anyway,  at  the  time  it 
seemed  to  me,  as  Bradwell  s  fag,  I  ought  to 
do  it ;  so  I  did. 

I  took  the  poem  and  rolled  it  up  so  as  not 
to  hurt  it,  and  hooked  off  to  Bradwell.  He 
was  in  his  study,  and  Trelawny,  who  shares 
it  with  him,  being  out  of  the  room,  I  was 
able  to  explain.     I  said: 

"  If  you  please,  Bradwell,  I've  come  from 
Mr.  Browne's  study,  and  he  was  not  there, 
and  happening  by  a  curious  axcident  to 
glance  on  the  table  I  saw  this.  Knowing 
about  you  and  Mabel,  and  being  your  fag,  I 
took  it." 

"  Took  what  ?"  said  Bradwell. 
124 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

I  put  the  thing  in  front  of  him,  and  he  got 
red  and  excited. 

"  It's  a  poem  to  Mabel  by  that  beast 
Browne,"  he  said. 

Then  he  read  it  out,  half  to  himself,  but 
1  heard.     The  thing  ran  like  this  : 

"TO  MABEL 

"  Oh  let  my  Muse  sing  to  the  name  of  Mabel, 
Whose  azure  eyes  are  fastened  to  my  soul, 
Like  to  forget-me-nots  in  button-hole. 

To  tell  of  my  heart's  torment  I'm  unable. 

My  thoughts  they  spin  ;  my  brain  it  grows  unstable 
When  fixed  on  Thee.  Perchance  it  is  my  r61e 
Never  to  reach  my  mad  ambition's  Goal, 

But  to  live  ever  'midst  scholastic  babel. 
Thy  glances  brighten  all  my  lonely  lot. 

Prometheus-like  a  vulture  gnaws  my  heart, 
In  biting  blasts  and  under  sunshine  hot. 

My  dreams  are  shattered  by  a  barbed  dart, 
And,  waking  wild,  I  scream  that  I  may  not 

Whisper  the  oaths  I  yearn  to  Thee  impart." 

I  told  Bradwell  I  didn't  quite  understand 
it,  and  he  sat  on  me. 

"  You  wouldn't,"  he  said,  ' ( a  kid  like  you. 
But  I  do.  It's  a  sonnit,  and  an  extramly 
125 


The  Human  Boy 

fine  one.  I  hate  the  chap,  but  it's  no  good 
pretending  he's  not  a  poet,  because  this  jolly 
well  proves  he  is.  Look  at  the  rimes  and 
the  smoothness  !" 

It  seemed  a  heroik  thing  of  Bradwell  to 
say  that,  feeling  as  he  did  to  Browne.  He 
thought  for  a  bit,  but  told  me  not  to  go. 

"Of  corse/' he  said,  "this  must  be  re- 
turned. All's  fair  in — in  a  case  of  this  kind, 
but—" 

Then  he  thought  very  deeply  and  read 
the  sonnit  again.  Suddenly  he  took  a  bit 
of  paper  and  copied  down  Browne's  poem 
word  for  word.  Then  he  told  me  to  cut 
back  like  lightning  to  Browne's  study,  and 
to  put  the  poem  back  on  his  desk  if  1  could 
— if  not,  to  most  carefully  keep  it  till  the 
first  chance  of  getting  it  back  to  Browne's 
room  without  being  spotted. 

"You're  a  splendid  fag,"  he  said,  "and 
I  shan't  forget  this.  It's  the  sort  of  thing 
that  squires  did  for  their  knights  in  olden 
times ;  and  they  got  good  rewards  too.  Now 
hook  it." 

It's  worth  a  lot,  mind  you,  to  get  praise 
like  that  from  such  a  chap  as  Bradwell. 
126 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

When  I  got  back,  Browne  was  rumaging 
over  his  table  and  sweering  a  good  deal  in  a 
loud  wisper.  He  told  me  to  wait  a  minute, 
and  went  off  to  look  in  his  bedroom.  Then 
I  seezed  my  opportunity,  and  slipped  the 
sonuit  on  his  table  under  some  papers. 
When  he  came  back  he  was  worried,  and 
went  on  hunting  till  he  found  it.  Then  he 
said  "  Ah  !"  to  himself,  and  got  pleasanter 
and  asked  me  what  I  wanted.  I  told  him 
my  Latin  grammar,  and,  being  in  a  very 
happy  state  now,  owing  to  finding  the  poem, 
he  gave  my  book  back  and  told  me  to  clear 
out ;  which  I  did. 

After  prep.  I  met  Bradwell  going  in  to 
prayers,  and  he  handed  me  a  note  for  Mabel 
to  put  in  the  usual  place.  He  looked  aw- 
fully rum  when  he  gave  it  to  me,  and  he 
saw  that  I  saw  he  looked  rum.     So  he  said  : 

"I  don't  mind  letting  you  know,  owing 
to  your  being  such  a  good  fag  and  my 
trusting  you  as  I  do.  You  may  read  the 
letter  in  prayers,  then  seal  it  down  and  put 
it  behind  the  pot  of  ferns  in  the  hall  in  the 
usual  place." 

Of  corse,  it  wasn't  really  a  letter,  or 
127 


The  Human  Boy 

Bradwell  wouldn't  have  let  me  read  it.  It 
was  just  Browne's  sonnit  coppied  out  by 
Bradwell  word  for  word ;  and  at  the  bottom 
where  the  words,  i '  What  about  poetry  now  ? 
—A.  T.  B."  A.  T.  B.  are  BradwelPs  initials, 
his  full  name  being  Arthur  Thomas  Brad- 
well. You  see,,  he  didn't  exsaxtly  say  he'd 
written  the  sonnit.  He  only  said,  "What 
about  poetry  now  ?" 

The  excitement  of  it  all  kept  me  awake 
for  hours  and  hours  through  the  night.  I 
don't  suppose  any  fag  ever  did  more  for  a 
big  fellow  than  I  had  done  for  Bradwell  that 
day.  Then  I  began  to  wonder  when  Browne 
would  send  off  his  poem,  and  wether  Mabel 
would  get  them  both  together  or  one  at 
a  time.  You  see,  of  corse,  Browne  would 
send  her  the  thing  as  original,  and  there 
was  nothing  in  BradwelPs  letter  to  exsaxtly 
say  he  hadn't  written  it ;  and  puzzling  the 
thing  out  for  hours  and  hours,  I  at  last 
came  to  the  conklusion  that  she  would  find 
it  very  difficult  which  to  believe,  because 
how  could  she  know  which  was  telling  the 
truth  to  her  ?  Then,  about  three  or  four  in 
the  morning  almost,  I  began  to  feel  rather 
128 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

terrible  over  it,  because  I  thought  of  what 
frightful  trouble  Browne  must  have  had  to 
write  the  sonnit.  He  might  have  taken 
terms  and  terms  over  it  for  all  I  could  tell, 
not,  of  corse,  knowing  myself  how  long  it 
took  to  write  poetry.  I  felt  rather  sorry  for 
Browne ;  but  after  all  a  chap's  duty  is  to  the 
fellow  he  fags  for  before  masters ;  and  feel- 
ing that,  I  went  to  sleep. 

Three  days  later  Bradwell  had  me  in  his 
room  and  told  me  the  end  of  it  all,  which 
shows  that  a  girl  never  does  what  you  might 
exspect. 

"As  a  lesson  to  you,  young  Watson,"  said 
Bradwell,  "I  may  tell  you  that  my  career 
has  been  utterly  blighted  and  my  life  ruined 
by  that  business  of  the  sonnit." 

I  said  I  was  sorry  to  hear  it. 

He  said  : 

"Yes,  blighted;  and  so's  his  —  I  mean 
Browne's.  She  got  my  letter  that  night 
and  his  next  morning.  That  night  she  felt 
all  her  old  feeling  for  me  return  because  of 
the  sonnit,  thinking  Fd  done  it.  Then, 
next  morning,  she  got  just  the  very  same 
stuff  to  a  word  from  Browne,  with  a  letter 
i  129 


The  Human  Boy 

saying  he  had  burned  the  midnight  oil  to 
compose  it.  Well,  there  you  are.  What 
does  she  do  ?  Insted  of  accepting  my 
statement,  being  the  first,  she  argues  in  a 
most  elaborate  way  that  I  couldn't  possibly 
have  coppied  from  Browne,  and  Browne 
couldn't  possibly  have  copied  from  me. 
But  it  would  have  been  to  much  of  a  coin- 
sidence  if  we'd  both  written  exsaxtly  the 
same  sonnit  out  of  our  own  heads,  so  what 
does  she  conklude  ?" 

I  said  I  didn't  know. 

"  Why,  fathead,  that  we  both  coppied  it 
from  somebody  else  —  out  of  some  book  by 
some  well-known  proper  dead  poet.  I've  no 
doubt  now,  on  thinking  over  it,  that  Browne 
did  do  that ;  because  when  I  first  read  his 
poem  I  could  hardly  believe  that  he  had 
written  such  real  poetry,  owing  to  the  rimes 
and  smoothness.  But  it's  all  over  now. 
She's  written  a  letter  I  can't  show  you.  To 
hope  even  for  her  friendship  wouldn't  be 
any  good.  A  girl  hates  a  joke  something 
frightful." 

' '  How  about  Browne  ?"  I  said. 

"  She's  written  to  him  also,  asking  him 
130 


Browne,  Bradwell,  and  Me 

where  he  got  the  verses  out  of,  .and  exsplain- 
ing  she  doesn't  believe  they  are  original,  and 
saying  how  another  acquaintance  of  hers 
had  sent  the  very  same  lot  the  day  before. 
So  now  you  see  what  a  sinful  mess  you've 
made  of  it/' 

I  said  I  did,  but  I  felt  it  was  my  duty  to 
him. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  said;  "but  the  ques- 
tion is,  What  do  I  do  now  ?  You  see  '  alPs 
fair'  and  all  that;  but  now,  being  out  of 
the  hunt,  ought  I  to  throw  up  the  sponge 
and  tell  the  truth,  or  ought  I  not  ?" 

"I  don't  know,  Bradwell,"  I  said;  "but 
anyway  you  won't  mention  me,  I  hope,  be- 
cause I  only  acted  for  you,  and  did  a  jolly 
dangerous  thing." 

"No,  you're  safe  enough,  and,  in  fact,  I'm 
going  to  reward  you  for  what  you  did  do," 
said  Bradwell.  "But  seeing  I'm  out  of  it, 
I  think  it  will  be  a  manly  act  to  Browne  if  I 
tell  Mabel  frankly  that  I  resorted  to  strateji." 

"  But  me  ?"  I  said. 

"I  shall  merely  inform  her,"  answered 
Bradwell,  "that  one  of  my  emissaceries 
found  the  poem,  and,  of  course,  brought  it 
131 


The  Human  Boy 

to  me ;  that  I  despatched  it — as  a  joke,  tak- 
ing care  not  to  say  I  was  the  anther.  I  shall 
end  with  these  words :  '  Browne  is  innosent. ' " 

All  of  which  he  did,  and  I  left  the  letter 
in  the  usnal  spot.  Bnt  Mabel  cnt  him  alto- 
gether from  that  day ;  and  he  told  me  girls 
have  no  humer  and  langhed  it  off,  thongh 
he  felt  it  a  lot,  and  often  smacked  my  head 
out  of  bitterness  of  mind  afterwards,  bnt 
not  hard.  He  gave  me  an  old  knife  for  a 
reward,  bnt  told  me  at  the  same  time  never 
to  do  anything  for  him  again  without  being 
commanded. 

As  for  Mabel,  she  threw  over  Browne  just 
like  she  threw  over  Bradwell,  in  spite  of 
Brad  well's  letter;  and  Bradwell  said  it  was 
a  nemmecis,  whatever  that  is ;  and  I  had 
a  nemmecis  to,  because  a  week  afterwards 
Bradwell  threw  over  me  and  made  young 
West  his  fag.  I  felt  hert,  but,  of  corse,  that 
didn't  get  known  to  Bradwell;  and  if  I  fag 
again,  I  wont  so  much  as  make  a  peece  of 
toste  unless  Fm  commanded  to. 
132 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

I  BELIEVE  Gideon  was  the  only  Jew 
that  ever  came  to  Dunston's,  and  I  ex- 
pect, taking  it  all  round,  he  might  have  had 
a  better  time  at  a  school  for  Jews  in  general ; 
though  in  oneway  he  wouldn't  have  done  as 
well,  and  wouldn't  have  had  the  adventure 
with  old  Grimbal,  which  turned  out  so  splen- 
didly for  him  when  old  Grimbal  died. 

Though  easily  the  richest  chap  at  Meri- 
vale,  and  getting  no  less  than  ten  shillings  a 
week  pocket-money,  Gideon  was  so  awfully 
fond  of  coin  that  he  hardly  spent  a  penny, 
and  the  only  thing  he  did  with  his  money 
was  to  lend  it  to  fellows.  He  didn't  lend  it 
for  nothing,  having  a  curious  system  by 
which  you  paid  in  marbles,  or  bats,  or 
knives  for  the  money,  and,  in  spite  of  that, 
still  had  to  pay  back  the  money  itself  after 
a  certain  time.  You  signed  a  paper,  and 
133 


The  Human  Boy 

Gideon  said  that  if  chaps  hadn't  paid  back 
the  tin  on  the  dates  named  it  would  be  very 
serious  for  them.  But  it  got  serious  for  him 
after  a  bit,  because  Steggles,  who  knew  quite 
as  much  about  money  as  Gideon  (though  he 
never  had  any),  borrowed  a  whole  pound 
once,  and  promised  to  pay  five  shillings  for 
it  for  one  term;  and  Gideon  was  new  to 
Steggles  then,  and  agreed.  But  when  the 
time  of  payment  came,  Steggles  said  that 
Gideon  had  better  regard  it  as  a  bad  debt, 
because  he  wasn't  going  to  pay  back  even 
the  original  pound.  Then  Gideon  thought 
a  bit,  and  asked  him  why,  and  Steggles  told 
him.  He  said  :  "  Because  you  know  jolly 
well  the  Doctor  doesn't  allow  chaps  to  lend 
money." 

And  Gideon  said  : 

' '  This  is  the  first  time  I've  heard  that." 
"Anyway,  it's  usury,  which  is  a  crime," 
said  Steggles,  "and  I'm  not  going  to  pay 
anything;  and,  being  less  than  twenty- 
one,  you  can't  make  me ;  so  it  amounts  to 
a  bad  debt,  as  I  told  you  just  now.  You've 
done  jolly  well,  one  way  and  another,  and 
you've  got  two  bats,  and  Lord  knows  how 
134 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

many  india-rubber-balls,  and  cricket -balls, 
and  silver  pencils,  and  knives  out  of  it,  in- 
cluding Ashby  minor's  watch-chain,  which  is 
silver ;  and  if  you  take  my  tip  you'll  keep 
quiet,  because  once  all  these  kids  get  to  know 
anybody  under  twenty-one  can  borrow  money 
without  returning  it,  then  it's  all  up  with 
your  beastly  financial  schemes." 

Gideon  was  remarkably  surprised  to  know 
what  a  lot  Steggles  had  found  out  about 
him,  and  accused  him  of  looking  into  his 
play-chest ;  and  Steggles  said  he  had.  Then 
Gideon  went;  and  about  three  chaps  who 
had  heard  the  talk  told  others,  and  they  told 
still  more  chaps,  until,  finally,  a  good  many 
fellows  who  owed  Gideon  money  felt  there 
was  no  hurry  about  paying  it  back  till  it 
happened  to  be  convenient.  In  fact,  Gideon 
jolly  soon  saw  he  couldn't  do  any  more  good 
for  himself  like  that,  and  at  the  beginning 
of  the  next  term,  when  chaps  were  pretty 
flush  of  coin,  he  wrote  up  in  the  gym, 
"There  will  be  a  sale  of  bats,  knives,  and 
other  various  useful  articles,  between  two 
and  three  o'clock,  by  auction,  on  Tuesday. — 
J.  Gideon." 

135 


The  Human  Boy 

Somebody  tore  it  down,  but  not  before 
most  fellows  had  read  it ;  and  when  Gideon 
and  young  Miller,  who  had  a  bat  in  the 
auction,  and  hoped  to  get  it  back  if  possible, 
were  seen  carrying  Gideon's  play -chest  to 
the  gym  after  dinner  on  the  appointed  day, 
of  course  we  went.  It  passed  off  very  well 
for  Gideon,  because  the  things  were  really 
good,  and  often  almost  new.  He  seemed 
to  know  all  about  auctions,  and  hit  the  chest 
with  a  stump,  and  explained  the  things,  and 
what  good  points  they  had  about  them. 
He  only  took  money  down,  and  I  will  say 
nobody  could  have  done  it  fairer.  If  a  knife 
had  a  broken  blade,  for  instance,  or  a  bat 
was  slightly  sprung,  which  happened  with 
one,  he  always  pointed  it  out,  so  that  no- 
body could  say  he  had  been  choused  over  it. 
Young  Miller  got  back  his  bat  for  four 
shillings  and  eightpence ;  and  Ashby  minor 
got  back  his  silver  chain  for  thirteen  shil- 
lings ;  but  it  wasn't  much  good  to  him,  be- 
cause, in  order  to  raise  the  thirteen  bob,  he 
had  to  raffle  the  chain  at  once,  at  shilling 
shares ;  and  he  took  one,  hoping  to  be  lucky, 
but  he  wasn't,  Fowle  unfortunately  getting 
136 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

it.  Gideon  told  me  afterwards  that  the  sale 
came  out  fairly,  but  not  quite  what  he  had 
hoped.  He  rather  sneered  at  the  Dunston 
chaps  in  general,  and  said  they  were  a  pov- 
erty-stricken crew  ;  which  got  me  into  abate, 
and  I  told  him  that  Fd  sooner  be  the  son  of 
an  officer  in  the  Royal  Navy,  which  I  am, 
than  the  biggest  Jew  diamond  dealer  in  the 
world,  his  father  being  in  that  profession. 
He  said  there  was  no  accounting  for  tastes, 
but  he  should  have  thought  that  a  man  who 
could  deliberately  go  and  be  a  sailor  must 
be  weak  in  the  head.  Then  I  punched  him, 
and  he  instantly  went  down  and  apologized. 
I  may  mention  that  I  am  Bray,  the  cock  of 
the  Lower  School. 

Before  coming  to  Gideon's  front  tooth, 
just  to  let  you  know  exactly  the  chap  he 
was,  Fll  mention  another  thing  he  did.  An 
old  woman  was  allowed  to  bring  up  fruit 
and  tuck  generally,  and  sell'  it  to  us  after 
morning  school.  Steggles,  who  knows  the 
reason  for  pretty  nearly  everything,  said 
this  was  permitted  by  Doctor  Dunston  to 
take  the  edge  off  our  appetites ;  but  any- 
way, the  old  woman  sold  strawberries  and 
137 


The  Human  Boy 

raspberries  in  summer-time,  and  these  were 
arranged  with  cabbage-leaves  in  little  wicker 
baskets  at  about  fourpence  each.  Well,  one 
day  Gideon,  who  never  refused  to  eat  fruit 
if  offered  it,  but  very  seldom  bought  any, 
asked  the  old  woman  what  she  gave  for 
the  wicker  baskets,  and  she  said  threepence 
a  dozen.  Then  he  asked  her  what  she 
would  give  for  those  which  had  been  used 
once,  and  she  thought,  and  said  they 
would  be  worth  at  least  three  halfpence  a 
dozen  to  her.  He  didn't  say  any  more,  but 
after  that  it  was  a  rum  thing  how  all  the 
used  baskets,  which  generally  were  seen 
kicking  about  the  playground  in  shoals, 
disappeared.  Nobody  noticed  it  at  the 
time,  but  afterwards  we  remembered  clearly 
that  they  had  disappeared.  And  just  at  the 
end  of  the  term  a  chap,  hurrying  in  late  af- 
ter the  bell  rang,  came  bang  on  Gideon  and 
the  old  woman  round  a  corner  out  of  sight 
of  the  gates.  And  the  chap  saw  Gideon 
give  her  a  pile  of  baskets  and  get  three  half- 
pence. Of  course,  it  was  the  last  three 
halfpence  he  ever  got  that  way,  because 
when  it  became  known  the  chaps  rendered 
138 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

their  baskets  useless  for  commerce  in  many 
ways.  And  Barlow  called  Gideon  "  Shylock 
minor  "  when  he  heard  that  he'd  made  two 
shillings  and  fivepence  halfpenny ;  which 
name  stuck  to  Gideon  forever.  And  Steg- 
gles  got  nine  other  chaps  to  subscribe  a 
penny  each  and  buy  a  pound  of  flesh  from 
a  butcher's  shop,  because  in  Shakespeare 
Shylock  was  death  on  his  pound  of  flesh. 
The  pound  was  put  under  Gideon's  pillow 
by  Steggles  himself,  and  when  Gideon 
shoved  his  watch  under  his  pillow,  which 
he  always  did  at  night,  he  found  it ;  and 
Steggles  says  he  turned  pale,  but  read  what 
was  pinned  on  the  pound  of  flesh,  and  then 
smiled  and  wrapped  the  meat  up  in  a  letter 
from  home,  and  said :  "  What  fools  you 
chaps  are,  wasting  money  like  that !  But 
it  looks  all  right,  and  will  mean  a  good  feed 
for  nothing." 

Next  day  he  got  up  very  early  and  took 
his  pound  of  flesh  down  to  the  kitchen  and 
got  them  to  cook  it ;  and  he  ate  about  half 
before  breakfast  and  had  the  rest  cold  in  his 
desk  during  Monsieur  Michel's  lesson,  which 
was  a  safe  time.  And  Steggles  said  we 
139 


The  Human  Boy 

ought  to  have  gone  one  better  and  put 
poison  on  it. 

The  great  affair  of  the  tooth  came  on  at 
the  beginning  of  next  term  ;  and  first  I  must 
tell  you  that  next  door  to  Dunston's  lived  an 
old  man,  so  frightfully  ancient  that  his  skin 
was  all  shrivelled  over  his  bones.  He  didn't 
like  boys  much,  but  he  would  look  over  his 
garden-wall  sometimes  into  our  playground 
and  scowl  if  anybody  caught  his  eye.  Vari- 
ous things,  of  course,  went  over  the  wall 
often,  and  it  was  one  of  the  excitements  of 
Dunston's  to  go  into  old  Grimbal's  garden 
and  get  them  back.  Twice  only  he  caught 
a  chap,  and  both  times,  despite  his  awful 
age  and  yellowness  of  skin,  he  thrashed  the 
chap  very  fairly  hard  with  a  walking-stick  ; 
but  he  never  reported  anybody  to  Dunston, 
and  it  was  generally  thought  he  regarded 
it  as  a  sort  of  sport  hunting  for  chaps  in  his 
garden.  Of  course,  in  fair,  open  hunting  he 
hadn't  a  chance,  and  the  two  he  did  catch 
he  got  by  stealth,  hiding  behind  bushes  on 
a  rather  dark  evening. 

Well,  the  facts  would  never  have  been 
known  about  this  tooth  but  for  Gideon's 
140 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

mean  spirit.  It  happened  to  be  necessary 
for  him  to  fight  me,  and  though  not  caring 
much  about  it,  he  couldn't  help  himself. 
Besides,  though  the  champion  of  the  Lower 
School,  I  was  tons  smaller  than  Gideon,  and 
Gideon  didn't  know  till  after  the  fight  that 
I  was  a  champion,  the  true  facts  about  my 
greatness  being  hid  from  him. 

Just  before  the  fight  Gideon  said:  "Oh  ! 
my  tooth,  by  the  way.  It  may  be  hurt,  and 
it  cost  my  father  five  guineas."  So,  to  our 
great  interest  he  unscrewed  one  of  his  two 
top  front  teeth  and  gave  it  to  his  second. 
You  couldn't  have  told  it  was  a  sham,  so  re- 
markably was  it  done,  and  it  screwed  on  to 
the  foundation  of  the  original  tooth  much 
like  a  spike  screws  into  the  sole  of  a  cricket- 
boot.  Gideon  had  fallen  down-stairs  when 
he  was  ten  and  knocked  off  half  the  tooth, 
so  he  told  us ;  but  Murray,  who  is  well  up 
in  science,  said  that  all  Jews'  front  teeth 
are  rather  rocky,  because  in  feudal  times 
they  were  pulled  out  with  pincers  as  a  form 
of  torture,  and  to  make  the  Jews  give  up 
their  secret  treasures.  Murray  said  that 
after  many  generations  of  pulling  out  Nat- 
141 


The  Human  Boy 

are  got  sick  of  it,  and  that  in  modern  times 
the  front  teeth  of  Jews  aren't  worth  talking 
about.  Murray  is  full  of  rum  ideas  like  that, 
and  he  hopes  to  go  in  for  engineering,  hav- 
ing already  many  secret  inventions  waiting 
to  be  patented. 

As  to  Gideon,  I  licked  him  rather  badly 
in  two  rounds  and  a  half.  Then  he  was 
mopped  up  and  dressed,  and  screwed  in 
his  front  tooth  again  with  the  greatest 
ease. 

Once  it  got  known  about  this  tooth,  and 
fellows  were  naturally  excited.  Steggles 
said  it  was  on  the  principle  of  a  tobacco- 
pipe  mouthpiece ;  and,  finding  the  chaps 
were  keen  to  see  it,  Gideon  let  it  be  gener- 
ally known  he  would  freely  show  it  to  any- 
body for  threepence  a  time,  and  to  friends 
for  twopence.  But  this  was  a  safe  reduc- 
tion to  make,  because,  properly  speaking, 
he  hadn't  any  friends.  Seeing  there  were 
nearly  200  boys  at  Dunston's,  and  that  cer- 
tainly half,  including  several  fellows  from 
the  Sixth-,  took  a  pleasure  in  seeing  the 
tooth,  and  didn't  mind  the  rather  high 
charge,  Gideon  did  jolly  well  ;  and  in  the 
142 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

case  of  Nubby  Tomkins,  he  made  actually 
oiie  shilling  and  threepence  ;  because  the 
tooth  had  a  most  peculiar  fascination  for 
Nubby,  and  he  saw  it  no  less  than  five 
times.  After  that  Gideon  made  a  reduction 
to  him,  as  well  he  might.  But  somehow 
Slade,  the  head  of  the  school,  was  very 
averse  to  Gideon's  front  tooth  when  he 
heard  about  it,  and  he  decided  that  there 
must  be  no  more  exhibitions  of  it  for  money. 
He  told  Gideon  so  himself. 

However,  a  new  boy  came  a  week  after- 
wards and  heard  about  the  strangeness  of 
the  tooth,  and  offered  a  shilling,  in  three 
instalments,  to  see  it ;  which  was  too  much 
temptation  for  Gideon,  and  he  showed  it, 
contrary  to  what  Slade  had  said. 

Slade,  of  course,  heard,  for  the  new  boy 
happened  to  be  his  own  cousin,  though 
called  Saunders  ;  and  then  there  was  a 
curious  scene  in  the  playground,  which  I 
fortunately  saw.  Slade  came  up  to  Gideon 
in  the  very  quiet  way  he  has,  and  asked  him 
in  a  perfectly  gentlemanly  voice  for  his  front 
tooth.  At  first  Gideon  seemed  inclined  not 
to  give  it  up,  but  he  saw  what  an  awfully 
143 


The  Human  Boy 

serious  thing  that  would  be,  and  finally  un- 
screwed it,  though  not  willingly. 

"  Now/'  said  Slade,  "  Til  have  no  more  of 
this  penny  peep-show  business  at  Merivale. 
I  told  you  once,  and  you  have  disobeyed  me. 
So  there's  an  end  of  your  beastly  tooth. 
What's  this  ?" 

He  took  something  out  of  his  pocket. 

"It's  a  catapult,"  said  Gideon. 

"  It  is,"  said  Slade,  "  and  I'm  going  to  use 
your  tooth  instead  of  a  bullet,  and  fire  it 
into  space." 

"  It  cost  five  guineas,"  said  Gideon. 

"  Don't  care  if  it  cost  a  hundred,"  an- 
swered Slade,  still  in  a  very  gentlemanly 
sort  of  way.  "  We  can't  have  this  sort  of 
thing  here,  you  know." 

Slade  was  just  going  to  fire  into  space,  as 
he  had  said,  when  a  robin  suddenly  settled 
within  thirty  yards  of  us,  on  the  wall  be- 
tween the  playground  and  old  Grimbal's. 
Slade  being  a  wonderful  shot  with  a  cata- 
pult (having  once  shot  a  wood-pigeon),  sud- 
denly fired  at  the  robin,  and  only  missed  it 
by  about  four  inches.  He  said  the  shape  of 
a  front  tooth  was  very  unfavorable  for  shoot- 
144 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

ing.  But,  anyway,  the  tooth  went  over  into 
Grimbal's,  and  we  distinctly  heard  it  hit 
against  the  side  of  his  house. 

Then  Slade  went  away,  and  we  rotted 
Gideon  rather,  because  not  having  the  tooth 
looked  rum,  and  made  a  difference  in  his 
voice.  He  took  it  very  quietly,  and  said  he 
rather  thought  his  father  would  be  able  to 
summon  Slade  ;  and  before  evening  school, 
having  marked  down  the  spot  where  he 
-fancied  his  tooth  had  hit  GrimbaPs  house, 
he  went  to  look  with  a  box  of  matches. 
What  happened  afterwards  he  told  us  frank- 
ly ;  and  it  was  certainly  true,  because,  with 
all  his  faults,  Gideon  never  lied  to  any- 
body. 

' '  I  went  quietly  over,  and  began  carefully 
looking  along  the  bottom  of  the  wall,  using 
a  match  to  every  foot  or  so,"  he  said,  i(  and 
I  had  done  about  half  when  I  heard  a  door 
open.  I  then  hooked  it,  and  ran  almost  on 
to  old  Grimbal.  He  had  not  opened  the 
door  at  all,  but  was  coming  up  the  garden 
path  at  the  critical  moment.  Of  course,  he 
caught  me.  He  was  going  to  rub  it  into  me 
with  his  stick,  when  I  said  I  should  think 
k  145 


The  Human  Boy 

it  very  kind  if  he  would  hear  me  first,  as  I 
had  a  perfectly  good  excuse  for  being  there. 

"He  said  : 

({ 'What  excuse  can  yon  have  for  trespass- 
ing in  my  garden,  you  little  oily  wretch  V 

" '  Oily  wretch  '  was  what  he  called  me  \ 
and  I  said  that  my  tooth  had  been  fired  into 
his  garden  that  very  day,  about  half -past  one, 
by  a  chap  with  a  catapult ;  and  I  lighted  a 
match  and  showed  him  it  was  missing. 

"  He  said  : 

" '  How  the  deuce  are  you  going  to  find 
a  tooth  in  a  garden  this  size  ?'  And  I  told 
him  I  had  marked  it  down  very  carefully, 
and  that  it  had  cost  five  guineas,  and  that 
I  rather  believed  my  father  would  be  able 
to  summon  the  chap  who  had  shot  it  away. 
He  seemed  a  good  deal  interested,  and  said 
he  thought  very  likely  he  might,  if  it  was 
robbery  with  violence.  Then  he  asked  me 
if  I  was  the  boy  he  had  seen  beating  down 
the  price  of  a  purse  at  Wilkinson's  in  Mer- 
ivale,  and  I  said  I  was.  Then  he  said, 
'  Come  in  and  have  a  bit  of  cake,  boy ';  and 
I  went  in  and  had  a  bit  of  cake,  and  saw  on 
a  shelf  in  his  room  about  fifty  or  sixty 
146 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

cricket-balls,  and  various  things  which  he 
has  collared  when  they  went  over.  He 
asked  me  a  lot  of  questions  about  different 
things,  and  I  answered  them.  All  he  said 
was  about  money.  He  also  asked  me  to 
be  good  enough  to  value  the  things  he  had, 
which  came  over  the  wall  from  time  to 
time;  and  I  did,  and  he  thanked  me.  They 
were  worth  fifteen  shillings  and  tenpence  ; 
and  Wright's  ball,  which  everybody  thought 
was  stolen  by  the  "milkman,  wasn't,  for  old 
Grimbal's  got  it ;  and  the  milkman  should 
be  told  and  apologized  to. 

"  Well,  he  knew  a  lot  about  money,  and 
told  me  he  had  thousands  of  golden  sover- 
eigns, which  he  makes  breed  into  thousands 
more. 

"  He  said  : 

"  '  You're  the  only  boy  I  ever  met  with 
a  grain  of  sense  in  his  head.  Now,  if  I 
gave  you  a  check  on  my  bankers  in  Meri- 
vale  for  five  pounds  to-day,  and  wrote  to 
you  to-morrow  morning  to  say  I  had  changed 
my  mind,  what  would  you  do  ?' 

"  I  said,  '  It  would  be  too  late,  sir,  because 
your  check  would  have  been  sent  off  to  my 
147 


The  Human  Boy 

father  that  very  night,  to  put  out  at  interest 
for  me/  He  said,  '  That's  right.  Never 
give  back  money,  or  anything/  Then  he 
asked  me  my  name,  and  told  me  I  might 
come  back  to-morrow  and  look  for  my  tooth 
by  daylight." 

That  was  Gideon's  most  peculiar  advent- 
ure, and,  though  he  never  found  the  tooth 
or  saw  old  Grimbal  again,  yet  about  seven 
or  eight  months  afterwards,  when  old  Grim- 
bal was  discovered  all  curiously  twisted  up 
and  dead  in  bed  by  the  man  who  took  him 
his  breakfast,  the  result  of  Gideon's  visit  to 
him  came  out.  Old  Grimbal  had  specially 
put  him  into  his  will  by  some  legal  method, 
and  Doctor  Dunston  had  Gideon  into  his 
study  three  days  after  old  Grimbal  kicked. 
It  then  was  proved  that  old  Grimbal  had  left 
Gideon  all  the  things  that  came  over  the 
wall,  and  also  a  legacy  of  fifty  pounds  in 
money,  because,  according  to  the  bit  of  the 
will  which  the  Doctor  read  to  Gideon  out  of 
a  lawyer's  letter,  he  was  the  only  boy  old 
Grimbal  had  ever  met  with  who  showed  any 
intelligence  above  that  of  the  anthropoid  ape. 

Gideon  returned  all  the  balls  and  things 
148 


Gideon's  Front  Tooth 

to  their  owners  free  of  charge,  but  not  until 
the  rightful  owners  proved  the}'  were  so. 
And  the  money  he  sent  to  his  father;  and 
his  father,  he  told  me  afterwards,  was  so 
jolly  pleased  about  the  whole  affair  that  he 
added  nine  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  to 
old  Grimbal's  fifty.  Therefore,  by  shooting 
Gideon's  front  tooth  at  a  robin,  Slade  was 
actually  putting  the  enormous  sum  of  one 
thousand  pounds  into  Gideon's  pocket,  which 
I  should  think  was  about  the  rummest  thing 
that  ever  happened  in  the  world. 

Gideon  stopped  at  Dunston's  one  term 
after  that.  Then  he  went  away,  and,  I  be- 
lieve, began  to  help  his  father  to  sell  dia- 
monds. He  was  fairly  good  at  French,  and 
very  at  German ;  but  of  other  things  he 
knew  rather  little,  except  arithmetic,  and 
his  was  the  most  beautiful  arithmetic  which 
had  ever  been  done  at  Merivale ;  for  I  heard 
Stokes,  who  was  a  seventeenth  wrangler  in 
his  time,  tell  the  Doctor  so. 
149 


v  The  Chemistry  Class 

THIS  story  about  Guy  Fawkes's  Night  at 
Dunston's  is  worth  knowing,  because  it 
shows  the  rumminess  of  Nubby  Tomkins. 
Tomkins,  I  may  say,  was  called  "  Nubby," 
owing  to  his  nose,  which  was  extremely 
huge,  though  he  said  it  was  Soman,  and 
swore  he  wouldn't  change  it  if  he  could. 
Anyway,  Bradwell  made  a  rhyme  about  it 
that  is  certainly  good  enough  to  repeat. 
He  wrote  it  first  on  a  black-board  with 
chalk,  and  a  good  many  chaps  learned  it  by 
heart. 

It  ran  like  this  : 

"Our  Nubby's  nose  is  ponderous, 
And  our  Nubby's  nose  is  long  ; 
So  it  wouldn't  disgrace 
Our  Nubby's  face 
If  half  bis  nose  was  gone." 
150 


The  Chemistry  Class 

Which  was  not  only  jolly  good  poetry,  but 
also  true  —  a  thing  all  poetry  isn't  by  long 
chalks,  as  you  can  see  in  Virgil  and  such 
like. 

Well,  Nubbs  sang  the  solos  in  chapel  on 
Sundays,  and  people  came  from  far  to  hear 
him  do  it ;  in  consequence  of  which,  so 
Steggles  said,  the  Doctor  favored  him,  and 
regarded  him  as  an  advertisement  to  Dun- 
ston's.  But  his* singing  wasn't  in  it  com- 
pared with  the  advertisement  he  gave  the 
Doctor  on  Guy  Fawkes's  Night  the  term  be- 
fore Slade  left. 

To  explain  the  whole  tremendous  thing  I 
must  tell  you  that  Nubbs  belonged  to  the 
chemistry  class.  This  class,  in  fact,  was 
pretty  well  started  for  him,  his  father  telling 
Dunston,  so  Nubbs  said,  that  he  shouldn't 
send  him  at  all  if  he  couldn't  be  taught 
chemistry ;  because  Nubbs  had  shown  a  good 
deal  of  keenness  for  chemicals  generally 
from  the  earliest  days,  and  bought  little 
boxes  of  " serpents'  eggs"  and  red  fire  in- 
stead of  sweets  ever  since  he  was  old  enough 
to  buy  anything.  He  had  also  blown  off  his 
eyebrows  and  eyelashes  with  a  mixture  he 
151 


The  Human  Boy 

was  grinding  up  in  a  mortar,  and  they  had 
never  grown  again  to  this  day — all  of  which 
things  showed  he  had  chemistry  in  him  to  a 
great  extent.  So  the  Doctor  started  a  chem- 
istry class,  and  a  chap  called  Stoddart,  from 
Merivale,  came  up  once  a  week  to  take  it ; 
and  Nubbs  joined,  and  so  did  I,  not  because 
I  had  chemistry  in  me  worth  speaking  of, 
but  because  I  was  a  chum  of  Nubby's.  Wil- 
son also  joined,  and  so  did  Hodges.  I  may 
mention  my  name  is  Mathers. 

I  always  thought  that  chemists  simply 
mix  the  muck  doctors  give  you  when  you're 
queer,  but  it  seems  not.  In  fact,  there  are 
several  sorts  of  chemists,  and  Nubbs  said  he 
hoped  to  belong  to  the  best  sort,  who  don't 
have  bottles  of  red  and  green  stuff  in  the 
windows,  and  so  on.  He  said  a  man  who 
sold  pills  and  tooth-brushes,  and  liquorice- 
root  and  soap,  could  not  be  considered  a 
classy  chemist.  The  real  flyers  made  dis- 
coveries and  froze  air,  and  sneaked  one  an- 
other's inventions,  and  got  knighted  by  the 
Queen  if  they  had  luck  and  if  they  were 
well  thought  of  by  the  newspapers.  I  should 
think  really  Nubbs  might  come  to  being 
152 


The  Chemistry  Class 

knighted  if  he  sticks  to  it,  for  even  down  to 
the  stuff  in  congh  lozenges  nothing  is  hid 
from  him. 

Once  the  matron  gave  me  simply  a  vile 
lozenge  for  my  throat,  which  got  a  bit  fog- 
gy owing  to  falling  into  the  water  during 
"hare  and  hounds."  Well,  the  lozenge 
was  white  in  color,  but  even  a  white  loz- 
enge may  be  very  decent  sometimes,  so  I 
took  a  shot  at  it 'going  to  bed.  But  it  was 
so  jolly  frightful  to  the  taste  that  I  chucked 
it  away,  and  next  morning  found  it  again 
and  examined  it  after  drying.  On  it  I 
then  found  the  words  "  Chlorate  of  potash." 
So  I  took  it  to  Nubbs.  He  said  it  was  cer- 
tainly a  chemical,  and  added  that  the  staff 
in  it  was  almost  the  same  as  you  make 
"Pharaoh's  serpents"  with.  I  could  hard- 
ly believe  such  a  thing,  so  he  lighted  the 
lozenge  and  it  burned  blue,  and  a  long,  wrig- 
gling, brownish  ash  came  curling  out  of  it 
like  a  snake,  just  as  Nubby  said,  which  is 
well  worth  knowing  to  anybody  who  ever 
has  a  chlorate  of  potash  lozenge.  Many 
such  like  remarkable  and  useful  things 
Nubby  could  tell  you ;  among  others,  how 
153 


The  Human  Boy 

to  mix  sulphur  and  gunpowder  and  other 
ingredients  for  fireworks.  He  had,  in  fact, 
an  awful  fine  book  (Jevoted  to  the  subject, 
and  wooden  affairs  to  load  cases  ;  and  once 
when  Stoddart  didn't  turn  up  and  the 
Doctor  put  us  on  our  honor  to  do  the 
proper  things  in  the  laboratory  alone,  Nubbs 
finished  off  analyzing  some  mess  in  about 
five  minutes,  and  spent  the  complete  rest  of 
the  time  making  a  rocket.  It  had  four  blue 
stars  and  thirteen  yellow  ones,  and  the  case 
was  made  out  of  a  stiff  brown  paper  roll  in 
which  his  mother  had  that  morning  sent 
Nubbs  a  photograph  of  her  new  baby  at 
home.  And  Nubbs  forgot  the  photograph 
and  stuffed  the  mixture  in  upon  it,  and  made 
a  separate  compartment  for  the  stars  on  top. 
So  the  photograph  of  Nubby's  mother's  new 
baby,  curiously  enough,  went  off  with  the 
rocket,  and  was  never  more  seen  by  mortal 
eye.  Not  that  Nubbs  cared.  He  kept  the 
rocket  till  the  Doctor's  birthday,  and  after 
prayers,  when  he  knew  he  was  in  his  study, 
with  the  windows  open  and  the  blinds  up, 
being  summer-time,  Nubbs  let  it  off  in  the 
front  garden,  and  we  helped.  It  turned  out 
154 


The  Chemistry  Class 

very  good  in  a  way,  though,  not  quite  a  per- 
fect rocket,  because  instead  of  going  up  it 
tore  along  the  ground.  But  it  tore  for  an 
enormous  distance,  and  then  turned  and 
came  hack  all  of  itself.  And  the  blue  stars 
did  not  go  off,  but  the  yellow  ones  did — or 
some — in  a  bed  of  rather  swagger  geraniums, 
unfortunately. 

The  Doctor  didn't  care  much  about  it, 
not  understanding  our  motives.  But  Nubbs 
explained  that  he  had  done  it  out  of  honor 
to  the  day.  Then  the  Doctor  thanked  him, 
and  said  he  had  doubtless  meant  well,  and 
that  from  the  earliest  times  of  the  Chinese 
the  pyrotechnist's  art  had  been  employed 
upon  occasions  of  legitimate  festivity  and 
rejoicing. 

I  mention  this  because  it  was  the  encour- 
agement he  had  over  this  creeping  rocket 
that  made  Nubbs  get  so  above  himself,  if 
you  understand  me.  He  never  forgot  it, 
and  next  autumn  term  he  actually  asked 
the  Doctor  if  he  might  have  a  regular  fire- 
work display  in  the  playground  on  the  night 
of  the  Fifth  of  November.  He  asked  rather 
cunningly,  just  after  an  English  History 
155 


The  Human  Boy 

lesson,  during  which  the  Doctor  had  been 
slating  Guy  Fawkes  frightfully ;  and  having 
said  such  a  heap  of  hard  things  about  the 
beggar,  Doctor  Dunston  couldn't  very  well 
refuse. 

He  said  : 

"  Your  request  is  unusual  Tomkins ;  but 
I  can  see  no  objection  at  the  moment.  How- 
ever, I  will  let  you  have  my  answer  at  no 
distant  date." 

And  I  said  to  Nubbs  : 

"  That  means  he'll  think  and  think  till 
he's  got  a  reason  why  you  shouldn't,  and  let 
you  know  then." 

But  Nubbs  said  to  me  : 

"I  believe  he'll  let  me  do  it,  feeling  so 
jolly  bitter  as  he  does  about  Guy  Fawkes." 

And  blessed  if  he  didn't !  Nubbs  under- 
took to  make  the  things  himself.  Nothing 
was  to  be  bought  but  chemicals  in  a  raw, 
unmixed  condition,  and  Doctor  Dunston 
actually  headed  the  subscription  list  with 
2s.  6d. ;  and  Thompson  gave  the  same,  and 
Mannering  2s.,  and  "Frenchy"  3s.  Fifty- 
two  chaps  also  contributed  various  sums 
from  Is.  to  Id.;  and  Nubbs  became  rather 
156 


The  Chemistry  Class 

important,  and  went  down  gradually  to  the 
bottom  of  the  Lower  Fifth  owing  to  the 
strain  upon  his  mind. 

He  gathered  together  £2  7s.  5d.  in  all, 
and  made  it  np  to  £2  10s.  himself  ;  and 
Fowle's  father,  who  was  in  some  business 
where  they  used  sulphur  in  terrific  quanti- 
ties, got  four  pounds  weight  of  it  for  noth- 
ing, and  Nubbs  said  it  was  a  godsend  for 
illuminating  purposes.  He  had  been  to  the 
Crystal  Palace,  and  told  us  he  was  going  to 
carry  everything  out  just  like  they  did 
there,  as  far  as  he  could  with  the  money. 
At  the  last  moment  he  got  a  tremendous 
increase  of  funds  in  the  shape  of  a  pound 
from  his  father;  and,  strangely  enough,  it 
was  that  extra  pound  that  wrecked  him. 
Without  that  father's  pound  he  couldn't 
have  arranged  the  principal  feature  of  the 
whole  performance  ;  and  without  that  prin- 
cipal feature  nothing  in  the  way  of  misfort- 
unes to  Nubbs  worth  mentioning  would  have 
fallen  out.  But  the  pound  came,  and  with 
it  a  letter  very  encouraging  to  Nubby. 

He  went  on  mixing  away  at  the  various 
proper  compounds  and  experimenting  with 
157 


The  Human  Boy 

them  till  he  got  his  rockets  to  go  up  like 
larks  and  his  Eoman  candles  to  shoot  out 
stars  the  length  of  a  cricket  pitch.  Then 
his  governor's  pound  came,  and  he  decided 
on  having  a  set  piece  with  it.  A  set  piece, 
Nubby  said,  is  the  triumph  of  the  firework 
maker's  art — and  very  likely  it  is  in  proper 
hands.  You  can  have  likenesses  in  fire,  or 
words,  or  ships,  or  "Fame  crowning  Virt- 
ue," or,  in  fact,  pretty  well  anything.  A  set 
piece  is  designed  small  first,  then  large ; 
and  it  is  worked  out  with  little  tiny  things 
like  squibs,  only  very  small  and  without  any 
bang  at  the  end.  These  are  all  lighted  off 
at  once,  and  they  burn  one  color  first,  then 
change  to  another.  Nubbs  said  his  would 
start  yellow,  because  it  was  cheaper,  and  fi- 
nally turn  green.  The  thing  was  what  de- 
sign to  have,  and  the  four  chaps  in  the 
chemistry  class  all  thought  differently.  I 
advised  trying  a  shot  at  a  huge  portrait  of 
the  Doctor,  but  when  it  came  to  particulars 
nobody  knew  how  to  work  a  portrait ;  and 
Hodges  thought  we  might  do  something 
about  Guy  Fawkes,  but  Nubbs  didn't  care 
about  that.  Then  Hodges  thought  again, 
158 


The  Chemistry  Class 

and  suggested  the  words,  "  God  bless  the 
Doctor/'  and  I  agreed  that  it  would  be  fine  ; 
but  Wilson  said  it  was  profane,  and  might 
annoy  the  Doctor  frightfully,  especially 
when  it  turned  green.  Then  Nubbs  sug- 
gested the  words,  "  Doctor  Dunston  is  a 
Brick  !"  and  Hodges  said  that  it  was  good, 
and  Wilson  said  it  might  be  good,  but  it 
wasn't  true,  anyway.  However,  it  was  three 
to  one,  though  we  all  admitted  that,  from 
his  point  of  view,  Wilson  was  right  to  hate 
the  Doctor,  because  the  Doctor  hates  him. 

The  thing  was  to  make  a  licking  big 
frame  of  light  wood,  and  arrange  the  letters 
across  it,  and  the  note  of  exclamation  at  the 
end.  This  we  did,  and  hammered  it  against 
the  playground  wall,  and  wheeled  np  the 
screens  that  go  behind  the  bowler's  arm  in 
the  cricket  season,  and  hid  away  the  set 
piece  behind  them  till  the  time  came.  Like- 
wise we  arranged  stakes  for  the  Roman 
candles,  and  a  board  for  the  Catharine 
wheels,  and  a  string  for  the  flying  pigeons, 
and  so  on.  And  also  we  rigged  up  bits  of 
tin  round  the  playground  and  by  the  fir- 
trees  at  the  top  end  and  behind  the  gym. 
159 


The  Human  Boy 

These  were  for  Bengal  lights  and  other  il- 
luminations. All  of  this  Nubbs  had  ar- 
ranged for  the  paltry  sum  of  £3  10s.  The 
chemistry  class  had  a  half-holiday  as  the 
time  drew  on,  and  we  worked  like  niggers, 
all  four  of  us.  Nubbs  commanded,  'so  to 
speak,  and  mixed  and  did  the  grinding  and 
pounding  and  stars.  Hodges  and  I  ham- 
mered up  the  heavy  posts  and  stakes  in  the 
playground,  and  carried  out  odd  jobs  gen- 
erally; and  Wilson  manufactured  cases  for 
everything  with  brown  paper  and  paste  and 
string. 

The  set  piece  took  two  hundred  and  thir- 
teen little  tubes.  These  Wilson  made  in 
lengths  of  a  yard  and  cut  off  at  the  required 
size.  And  Nubbs  stuffed  them — with  green 
fire  first  and  yellow  on  top.  It  promised  to 
be  a  jolly  big  thing  altogether,  and  four  days 
before  the  night  Nubbs  began  to  get  awfully 
nervous,  and  to  prepare  yards  and  yards  of 
touch-paper. 

And  Corkey  minimus  heard  the  Doctor 
say  to  Browne  : 

"  Really  the  lads  have  devoted  no  little 
energy  and  method  on  their  proceedings ; 
160 


The  Chemistry  Class 

and  it  appears — so  Mr.  Stoddart  tells  me — 
that  the  boy  Tomkins  has  mixed  his  com- 
pounds quite  correctly,  thereby  insuring  that 
brilliance  and  variety  which  is  looked  for 
in  an  exhibition  of  this  kind.  I  wonder 
whether  we  might  ask  the  parents  and 
friends  of  those  who  dwell  at  Merivale  and 
the  immediate  neighborhood." 

And  Browne,  who  never  misses  a  chance 
of  showing  the  brute  he  is  at  heart,  said  : 

"Keally,  I  should  think  twice,  Doctor 
Dunston.  There  is  such  an  element  of 
chance  with  amateur  fireworks.  Unfortu- 
nately, we  can't  have  a  dress  rehearsal,  as 
with  the  scenes  from  Shakespeare  and  the 
recitations  at  the  end  of  the  term." 

" Nevertheless/'  said  the  Doctor,  "I  am 
disposed  to  run  the  risk.  A  little  harmless 
pleasure  combined  with  courtesy  to  relatives 
at  mid-term  is  rather  desirable  than  not." 

So  about  fifty  people  were  asked,  and 
they  brought  fifty  more,  and  the  cads  from 
Merivale  got  to  know  too,  and  there  was 
a  good  crowd  of  them  along  the  fence  by 
the  gym.  Also  two  policemen  came,  and 
Nubbs,  who  was  nervous  before,  grew  much 
l  161 


The  Human  Boy 

worse  when  he  heard  of  it.  Besides,  we 
had  a  frightful  shock  two  days  before  the 
firework  night,  owing  to  the  loss  of  poor 
old  Wilson.  By  simply  sickening  luck  he 
got  reported  by  Browne  for  cheek.  It  was 
when  Browne  came  out  in  a  new  pair  of 
awfully  squeaking  boots  with  sham  pearl 
buttons  at  the  side  and  drab  tops ;  and 
Wilson  said  they  were  ugly  "  eighteens  "  and 
Browne  heard  him.  The  Doctor  took  an 
awfully  grave  view  of  this,  and  told  Wilson 
that  personality  was  the  vilest  kind  of  cheek. 
Which  wouldn't  have  mattered,  but  he  gave 
him  a  thousand  lines  as  well,  and  forbade 
him  to  see  the  fireworks  or  help  any  more 
with  them. 

"And  that's  the  man  you  call  a  brick!" 
Wilson  said,  rather  bitterly.  It  certainly 
was  rough,  after  the  way  he  had  worked ; 
but  from  the  Wing  Dormitory,  where  he 
would  be  at  the  time,  he  might  be  able  to 
see  pretty  well  everything  by  leaning  far  out 
between  the  window  bars.  Which  Nubbs 
pointed  out  to  him,  and  he  said  he  should. 
He  also  said  he'd  pay  out  Browne  some  day, 
and  very  likely  Dunston  too. 
162 


The  Chemistry  Class 

Well,  the  night  came,  and  it  was  a  fine 
one ;  and  the  cads  likewise  came  and  lined 
the  fence.  Then  the  Doctor  clapped  his 
hands  twice,  which  was  the  signal  to  begin ; 
and  just  as  he  did  so  out  burst  yellow  fire 
everywhere  behind  the  bits  of  tin,  lighted 
simultaneously  by  seven  chaps.  And  every- 
body seemed  to  like  it ;  and  the  Doctor 
said  : 

"Capital!  Bravo,  Tomkins — a  pleasing 
and  fairy  like  conceit  V 

Then  Nubbs  let  fly  two  rockets,  and  they 
went  up  well  and  burst  out  in  stars,  though 
not  as  many  by  any  means  as  we  had 
crammed  into  them ;  but  one  twisted  for 
some  reason,  and,  instead  of  falling  in  the 
direction  of  the  cads,  the  stick  twinkled 
down,  with  just  a  spark  of  red  here  and 
there  in  the  line  of  it,  bang  behind  the 
chapel.  Both  Nubbs  and  I  distinctly  heard 
it  go  smack  through  the  top  of  the  green- 
house, and  I  rather  think  the  Doctor  heard 
it  too,  for  he  didn't  say  "  Bravo "  or  any- 
thing, but  just  sent  a  kid  to  tell  Nubbs  to 
point  future  rockets  the  other  way,  which 
disheartened  Nubbs,  because  he's  like  a  girl 
163 


The  Human  Boy 

at  times  of  great  excitement  such  as  this 
was.  Bat  he  soon  cheered  up,  especially  at 
the  splendid  success  of  the  Catherine-wheels, 
which  he  hadn't  hoped  much  from,  and  at 
the  cheers  even  the  cads  gave  for  the  "  gold- 
en rain "  which  showed  up  everything  as 
bright  as  day,  including  Maude  and  the 
other  Dunston  girls,  and  Mrs.  Dunston,  and 
Nubby's  father  standing  smiling  very  amia- 
bly by  the  Doctor,  and  the  policemen  blink- 
ing, and  the  crowd,  and  a  white  dab  hanging 
out  of  a  high  window  afar  off,  which  I  saw 
and  knew  to  be  Wilson. 

Only  the  balloon  failed,  owing  to  the 
nervousness  of  Nubbs,  who  set  fire  to  the 
whole  show  while  he  was  trying  to  light  the 
spirit  on  the  sponge  underneath  ;  but  he 
passed  it  off  with  crackers  thrown  among  the 
kids,  and  then,  while  they  were  all  yelling, 
he  dragged  away  the  cricket  screens,  and 
Nubbs  let  off  the  set  piece.  He  lighted  the 
touch-paper,  and  it  snapped  and  crackled 
all  over  the  design  in  a  moment,  and  a  thick 
smoke  rose,  and  out  of  it  came  the  set  piece 
flaring  in  rich  yellow  fire.  Of  course,  we 
expected  what  Nubbs  and  Wilson  had  ar- 
164 


The  Chemistry  Class 

ranged,  viz.,  "Doctor  Dnnston  is  a  Brick!" 
but  instead  there  came  ont  these  awful 
words  : 

"DOCTOR  DUNSTON 
IS  A  BRUTE  r 

That  just  shows  what  a  frightful  difference 
three  letters  will  make  in  a  thing  ;  and  the 
night  was  so  dark  and  the  letters  so  big  that 
you  could  have  read  them  a  mile  off.  Only, 
if  you  will  believe  it,  Dunston  didn't.  People 
applauded  like  anything  at  first,  till  the  pre- 
liminary smoke  cleared  off  and  they  read 
the  truth.  Then  they  shut  up  and  made  a 
sound  like  wind  coming  through  a  wood. 
But  the  cads  yelled  and  roared,  and  so  did 
the  policemen,  for  I  heard  them  ;  and  to 
make  the  frightful  thing  a  shade  more 
frightful,  if  possible,  the  Doctor,  who  is  as 
blind  as  ten  bats,  and  didn't  realize  the 
end  of  the  set  piece,  but  only  read  his 
name  at  the  top,  clapped  his  hands  and 
said  : 

"  Famous,  famous  !  You  excel  yourself, 
Tomkins  I" 

165 


The  Human  Boy 

Then  the  words  began  gradually  to  turn 
green  ;  and,  for  that  matter,  so  did  Nubbs. 
In  fact,  whether  it  was  the  reflected  light 
or  the  condition  of  his  mind,  or  both,  I 
certainly  never  saw  any  chap  become  so  per- 
fectly horrid  to  look  at  as  Nubbs  did  then. 
His  nose  seemed  to  stand  out  like  a  great 
green  rock,  and  his  eyes  bulged,  and  his 
chin  dropped,  and  the  set  piece  turned  his 
teeth  as  bright  as  precious  emeralds.  He 
just  merely  said,  "Good  Lord  I"  —  nothing 
more — then  hooked  it  off  into  the  darkness, 
simply  shattered. 

At  the  same  time  Stoddart  and  Thomp- 
son, and  Mannering  and  Browne,  and  some 
chaps  from  the  Sixth,  not  knowing  what 
color  the  beastly  set  piece  might  turn  next, 
or  how  soon  the  Doctor  would  spot  it, 
dashed  at  the  thing  and  dragged  it  down, 
and  trampled  on  it ;  and  Browne  in  the 
act  burned  the  very  boots  that  Wilson  had 
cheeked,  which  pleased  Wilson  a  good  deal 
when  he  heard  it. 

After  that  it  was  all  over,  and  the  Doctor, 
thinking  the  set  piece  had  died  a  natural 
death,  so  to  speak,  saw  me  under  the  gas- 
166 


The  Chemistry  Class 

light  at  the  gate,  as  everybody  streamed  out, 
and  said : 

"Ah,  yonng  man,  what  was  that  last  word 
in  the  illumination  ?  I  know  yon  and 
Hodges  also  had  a  hand  in  it,  as  well  as 
Tomkins." 

And  I  said  : 

"  Please,  sir,  we  arranged  the  words  ' Doc- 
tor Dnnston  is  a  Brick  V" 

And  he  said  : 

"  Excellent !  Pithy  and  concise  if  a  little 
familiar.  I  only  hope  yon  all  echo  that 
sentiment— every  one  of  yon.  Send  Tom- 
kins  to  me,  and  tell  the  other  fellows  there 
is  cake  and  lemonade  going  in  the  dining- 
hall." 

Just  as  if  the  other  fellows  didn't  know 
it !  But  everybody  gave  three  cheers  for  the 
Doctor  and  Mrs.  Dunston,  and  I  started  to 
find  Nubbs;  and  the  policemen  made  the 
cads  go,  though  they  went  reluctantly. 

I  looked  long  for  Nubby,  and  at  last 
found  him  all  alone  in  the  gym.  One  bit 
of  candle  was  burning,  which  looked  fright- 
fully poor  after  all  the  brilliance  of  the  fire- 
works, and  Nubbs  had  got  the  parallel  bars 
167 


The  Human  Boy 

under  the  flying  rings,  and  was  standing  on 
them — I  mean  the  bars. 

"What  the  Dickens  are  you  doing,  Nub- 
by?"Isaid. 

And  he  answered  : 

"  It's  no  jolly  good  attempting  to  stop  me 
now,  because  it's  too  late.  My  life  is  ruined, 
and  my  father  was  there  too  to  see  it  ruined ; 
and  I'm  going  to  hang  myself,  as  every  con- 
venience for  hanging  is  here." 

Mind  you,  he  would  have  done  it.  Know- 
ing Tomkins  as  I  do,  and  his  great  ingen- 
iousness,  I  don't  mind  swearing  that  he 
would  have  been  a  hung  chap  in  another 
minute.  So  I  told  him  ;  but,  though  doubt- 
ful, he  decided  to  put  it  off,  anyway.  I  even 
got  him  to  promise  he  wouldn't  hang  himself 
at  all  if  his  father  believed  his  innocence 
about  the  set  piece.  And  Crewe,  the  head- 
master under  the  Doctor,  and  old  Briggs 
and  Thompson  got  us  in  a  corner  —  Nubbs 
and  Hodges  and  me — and  we  solemnly  vowed 
we  knew  nothing  of  it ;  and  Crewe  went 
down  to  the  Merivale  Trumpet  and  made  the 
reporter  put  in  the  original  words  when  it 
came  out ;  and  Thompson  explained  to  Mrs. 
168 


The  Chemistry  Class 

Dunston  how  some  evil-disposed,  wicked  per- 
son had  tampered  with  the  set  piece,  and 
begged  her  not  to  wound  the  feelings  of  the 
Doctor  by  telling  him ;  and  the  Sixth  hush- 
ed it  up  among  the  kids ;  and  I  sneaked  a 
bit  of  cake  for  Wilson,  and  went  up  after  the 
row  was  over  and  told  him  everything,  down 
to  the  burning  of  Browne's  boots. 

He  confessed  to  me  then  that  he  had 
done  it,  which  didn't  surprise  me  much, 
knowing  how  he  had  worked,  and  then  at 
the  last  minute  almost  been  deprived  of 
seeing  the  show.  It  was  certainly  a  terrible 
revenge;  but,  of  course,  a  terrible  revenge 
which  doesn't  come  off  owing  to  a  master 
being  too  shortsighted  to  see  it  is  pretty 
sickening  for  the  revenger.  Besides  the 
risk. 

Mr.  Crewe  worked  like  a  demon  to  find 
out  who  had  done  it,  and  he  suspected 
Wilson  from  the  first,  but  couldn't  prove  it. 
But  at  last  he  did  find  out  through  Fowle, 
who  got  it  out  of  Ferrars,  who  got  it  out 
of  West,  who  got  it  out  of  Nnbbs  in  a 
moment  of  rage.  For  I  may  say  Wilson 
himself  told  Nubbs,  and  Nubbs  never  for- 


The  Human  Boy 

gave  him,  and  says  he  never  shall,  even  if 
they  ever  both  go  to  heaven. 

So  Crewe,  having  found  ont,  had  some 
talk  with  Wilson.  But  he  didn't  lick  him; 
whereas  Wilson  did  lick  Fowle,  and  that 
pretty  badly.  Not  that  Fowle  cares  for  an 
ordinary  licking  more  than  another  chap 
cares  for  a  smack  on  the  head.  The  only 
way  to  hurt  him  is  to  twist  his  arm  round, 
about  twice,  and  then  hit  him  hard  just 
above  the  elbow.  I  may  say  I  found  this 
out  myself,  and  everybody  does  it  now. 
170 


Doctor  Dunston's    Howler 

MIND  you,  if  it's  interesting  to  watch 
any  ordinary  person  come  a  howler, 
what  must  it  be  to  see  your  own  head-mas- 
ter do  it  ?  A  "  howler/'  of  course,  is  the 
same  as  a  "  cropper,"  and  you  can  come  one 
at  cricket  or  football  or  in  class  or  in  every- 
day life. 

Dr.  Dunston's  howler  was  a  most  compli- 
cated, sort,  and  I  had  the  luck  to  be  one  of 
the  chaps  who  witnessed  him  come  it.  Of 
course,  to  see  any  master  make  a  tremendous 
mistake  is  good  ;  but  when  you  are  dealing 
with  a  man  almost  totally  bald  and  sixty-two 
years  of  age  the  affair  has  a  solemn  side,  es- 
pecially owing  to  his  being  a  Eev.  and  a  D.D. 
In  fact,  Slade,  who  was  with  me,  said  the 
spectacle  reminded  him  of  the  depths  of  woe 
beggars  got  into  in  Greek  tragedies,  which 
often  wanted  half  a  dozen  gods  to  lug  them 
171 


The  Human  Boy 

out  of.  But  no  gods  troubled  themselves 
about  Dunston ;  and  it  really  was  a  bit  awful 
looked  at  from  his  point  of  view  ;  because 
it's  beastly  to  give  yourself  away  to  kids  at 
the  best  of  times ;  and  no  doubt  to  him  all 
of  us  are  more  or  less  as  kids,  even  the  Sixth. 

He  often  had  a  way^of  bringing  the  parents 
of  a  possible  new  boy  through  one  or  two  of 
the  big  class-rooms  and  the  chapel  of  Meri- 
vale,  just  to  show  what  a  swagger  place  it 
was.  Then  we  all  bucked  up  like  mad,  and 
the  masters  bucked  up  too,  and  gave  their 
gowns  a  hitch  round  and  their  mortar-boards 
a  cock  up,  and  made  more  noise  and  put  on 
more  side  generally,  just  to  add  to  the  splen- 
dor of  the  scene  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  parents  of  the  possible  new  boy. 

Sometimes  the  affair  was  rather  spoiled  by 
an  aunt  or  mother  or  some  woman  or  other 
asking  the  Doctor  homely  sort  of  questions 
about  sanitary  arrangements  or  prayers ; 
then  to  see  old  Dunston  making  long- 
winded  replies  and  getting  even  the  drains 
to  sound  majestic  was  fine.  His  manner 
varied  according  to  the  people  who  came 
over  the  school.  Sometimes,  if  it  only  hap- 
172 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

pened  to  be  a  guardian  or  a  lawyer,  he  was 
short  and  stern.  Then  he  just  swept  along, 
calling  attention  to  the  ventilation  and  dis- 
cipline, and  looking  at  the  chaps  as  if  they 
were  dried  specimens  in  a  museum  ;  but 
with  fathers  or  women  he  had  a  playful  mood 
and  an  expression  known  as  the  "parent- 
smile."  To  mothers  he  never  talked  about 
"pupils,"  but  called  the  whole  shoot  of  us 
"  his  lads,"  and  beamed  and  fluttered  his 
gown,  like  a  hen  with  chickens  flutters  its 
wings.  The  masters  always  copied  him,  and 
to  see  that  little  brute  Browne  trying  to 
flutter  over  the  kids  like  a  hen  when  the 
Doctor  came  into  his  class-room  was  a  ghast- 
ly sight,  knowing  him  as  we  did.  Also  the 
Doctor  would  often  pat  a  youngster  on  the 
head  and  beam  at  him.  He  generally  singled 
Corkey  minimus  out  for  patting  and  beam- 
ing; and  Corkey  minor  said  the  irony  of  it 
was  pretty  frightful,  considering  that  Corkey 
minimus,  for  different  reasons,  got  licked 
oftener  by  the  Doctor  than  almost  any  chap 
in  the  Lower  School. 

Well,  one  day  in  came  the  Doctor  to  the 
school-room  of  the  Fourth.     I'm  in  the  Sixth 
173 


The  Human  Boy 

myself,  and  a  personal  chum  of  Slade's,  the 
head  of  the  school ;  but  I  happened  to  have 
gone  to  the  Fourth  with  a  message,  so  I  saw 
what  happened.  A  very  big  man  who  puffed 
out  his  chest  like  a  pigeon  followed  the 
Doctor.  He  had  a  blue  tie  on  with  a  jolly 
bright  diamond  in  it,  and  there  were  small 
purple  veins  in  a  regular  network  over  his 
cheeks,  and  his  mustache  was  yellowish-gray 
and  waxed  out  as  sharp  as  pins.  A  lady  fol- 
lowed him  with  red  rims  to  her  little  eyes 
and  gold  things  hanging  about  her  chest. 
The  Doctor,  being  all  arched  up  and  rolled 
round  from  the  small  of  the  back  like  a 
wood-louse,  seemed  to  show  they  were  par- 
ents of  perhaps  more  fellows  than  one.  The 
big  chap  wore  an  eye-glass  and  spoke  very 
loud,  and  was  jolly  pleasant. 

"Ah!"  he  said,  "and  this  is  where  the 
little  boys  work,  eh  ?  I  expect,  now,  my 
youngster  will  be  drafted  in  among  these 
small  men,  Doctor  Dunston  ?" 

"  It  is  very  possible — nay,  probable  in  the 
highest  degree,  my  lord,"  said  the  Doctor. 
"We  are  now,"  he  continued,  "  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Fourth  and  Lower  Fourth.  The 
174 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

class-room  is  spacious,  as  yon  see,  and  new. 
A  commanding  panorama  of  the  surround- 
ing country  and  our  playing-fields  may  be 
enjoyed  from  the  French  windows.  If  two 
of  you  lads  will  move  that  black-board  from 
there,  Lord  Golightly  may  be  able  to  see 
something  of  the  prospect." 

Two  of  the  kids  promptly  knocked  down 
the  black-board  nearly  on  to  the  purple-veined 
lord's  head.  Then  suddenly  the  lady  called 
out  and  attracted  his  attention.  Looking 
round,  we  found  she  had  got  awfully  excited, 
and  stood  pointing  straight  at  young  Tom- 
lin.  He  was  a  mere  kid,  at  the  extreme 
bottom  of  the  Lower  Fourth ;  but  he  happen- 
ed to  be  my  fag,  so  I  was  interested.  She 
pointed  at  him,  in  the  most  frantic  way,  with 
a  hand  in  a  browny-yellow  glove,  and  a  gold 
bracelet  outside  the  glove  and  a  little  watch 
let  into  the  bracelet. 

' c  Good  gracious  V  she  said,  "  do  look 
Ralph  !  What  an  astounding  resemblance  ! 
Whoever  is  that  boy  ?" 

Tomlin  turned  rather  red  in  the  gills, 
which  was  natural. 

"Do  you  know  the  lad  ?"  asked  the  Doctor. 
175 


The  Human  Boy 

" Never  saw  him  before  in  my  life;  but 
I  hope  he'll  forgive  me  for  being  so  rude  as 
to  point  at  him  in  that  way,"  she  said. 
"He's  exactly  like  our  dear  Carlo;  they 
might  be  twins." 

Tomlin  thought  she  meant  a  pet  dog,  and 
got  rather  rum  to  look  at. 

"  Carlo  is  our  son,  you  know/'  explained 
the  lord. 

"  Singular  coincidence,"  answered  Doctor 
Dunston,  not  looking  very  keen  about  it. 
In  fact,  he  wasn't  too  fond  of  Tomlin  at 
any  time,  and  seemed  sorry  he  should  be 
dragged  in  now.  But  the  kid  was  a  very 
tidy  sort,  really — Captain  of  the  Third 
Footer  Eleven  and  a  good  runner.  He  hap- 
pened to  be  the  son  of  a  big  London  hatter 
who  had  a  shop  of  enormous  dimensions  in 
Bond  Street;  and  the  Doctor  was  said  to 
get  his  own  hats  there ;  yet  he  didn't  like 
Tomlin. 

Tomlin  went  out  into  the  open,  and  the 
purple -veined  lord  shook  hands  with  him, 
and  the  lord's  wife  stood  him  in  the  light 
and  turned  him  round  to  catch  different  ex- 
pressions. Then  they  admitted  that  the 
176 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

likeness  was  really  most  wonderful,  and 
they  both  hoped  Tomlin  and  Carlo  would 
be  great  friends.  Tomlin,  told  by  the  Doc- 
tor to  answer,  stood  on  one  leg,  twisted  his 
arms  in  a  curious  way  he's  got  when  ner- 
vous, and  said  he  hoped  they  might  be ;  but 
he  said  it  as  though  he  knew  jolly  well  they 
wouldn't. 

Then  the  lord  and  the  lady  cleared  out, 
and  a  week  later  Carlo  came.  His  real 
name  was  Westonleigh,  and  he  was  a  vis- 
count or  something,  being  eldest  son  of  an 
earl ;  but  we  called  him  Carlo,  and  he  grew 
jolly  waxy  when  he  found  his  nickname  had 
got  to  Merivale  before  him.  He  fancied 
himself  to  a  most  hideous  extent  for  a  kid 
of  nine,  and  explained  he'd  only  come  for  a 
year  or  so  before  going  to  Eton.  He  went 
into  the  Lower  Fourth,  so  Tomlin  ceased  to 
be  at  the  bottom  of  that  class. 

The  likeness  between  Carlo  and  my  fag 
was  really  most  peculiar.  It  must  have 
been  for  Carlo's  own  mother  to  see  it ;  but 
when  Carlo  heard  that  Tomlin  would  be  a 
hatter  in  the  course  of  years  he  refused  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  him.  And  Tom- 
m  177 


The  Human  Boy 

lin  loathed  Carlo,  too,  from  the  start ;  so  in- 
stead of  being  chums  according  to  the  wish 
of  the  purple  -  veined  lord,  they  hated  one 
another,  and  the  first  licking  of  any  impor- 
tance which  Carlo  got  he  had  from  Tomlin. 
The  chap  was  a  failure  all  round,  and  it's 
no  good  saying  he  wasn't.  Everybody  saw 
it  but  Doctor  Dunston,  and  he  wouldn't. 
Carlo  proved  to  be  a  sneak  and  a  liar  of  the 
deepest  sort  —  not  to  masters,  but  to  the 
chaps;  and  he  was  also  jolly  cruel  to  animals, 
and  very  much  liked  to  torture  things  that 
couldn't  hit  him  back,  such  as  mice  and  in- 
sects. He  had  a  square  face  and  snubby 
nose,  and  a  voice  and  eyes  exactly  similar  to 
Tomlin's;  but  there  was  no  likeness  in  their 
characters,  Tomlin  being  a  very  decent  kid, 
as  I  have  said.  Fellows  barred  Carlo  all 
round,  and  he  only  had  one  real  chum  in 
the  miserable  shape  of  Fowle.  Fowle  sucked 
up  to  him  and  listened  for  hours  about  his 
ancestors,  and  buttered  him  at  all  times, 
hoping,  of  course,  that  some  day  he  would 
get  asked  to  Carlo's  father's  castle  in  the  hol- 
idays. I  may  also  note  Carlo  never  played 
games,  excepting  tossing  behind  the  gym- 
178  • 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

nasi  urn  for  half -pennies  with   Fowle   and 
Steggles,  Steggles,  of  course,  winning. 

Happening  one  day  to  go  down  through 
the  playground,  young  Tomlin  saw  Weston- 
leigh  near  a  little  fir-tree  which  grew  at  the 
top  of  the  drill-ground.  He  was  alone,  and 
seemed  to  be  doing  something  queer,  so 
Tomlin  stopped  and  went  over. 

"What  are  you  up  to  ?"  he  said. 

"Frying  ants,"  said  Carlo,  "though  it's 
no  business  of  yours.  You  see,  there's  tur- 
pentine juice  come  out  of  this  tree  where  I 
cut  it  yesterday,  and  you  can  stick  the  ants 
in  it,  then  fry  them  to  a  cinder  with  a  burn- 
ing-glass, like  this/' 

"That's  what  you're  doing?" 

"It  is." 

"Don't  you  think  you're  rather  a  little 
beast  ?" 

"  What  d'  you  mean,  hatter  ?" 

"  I  mean  I'm  going  to  kick  you  for  being 
such  a  cruel  beast." 

They  stood  the  same  height  to  an  inch 
and  were  the  same  age,  so  it  was  a  per- 
fectly sportsman-like  thing  for  Tomlin  to 
offer. 

179 


The  Human  Boy 

"You  seem  to  forget  who  you're  talking 
to,"  said  Carlo. 

"No,  I  don't — no  chance  of  that.  Your 
ancestors  came  over  with  William  the  Con- 
queror— carried  his  portmanteau,  I  expect, 
then  cleared  out  when  the  fighting  came  on. 
Yes,  and  another  ancestor  stabbed  a  friend 
of  Wat  Tyler's  when  he  was  face  down  on 
the  ground,  after  somebody  else  had  knock- 
ed him  over.  That's  what  you  are,  ant- 
fryer." 

"I'll  thank  you  to  let  me  pass,"  said 
Carlo.  "I'm  not  accustomed  to  talking  to 
people  like  you,  and  if  you  think  I'm  going 
to  fight  with  a  future  hatter  you're  wrong." 

"  Then  you  can  put  your  tail  between 
your  legs  and  swallow  this,"  said  Tomlin, 
and  he  went  on  and  licked  Carlo  pretty 
well.     He  also  broke  his  burning-glass. 

"You'll  live  to  be  sorry  for  this  all  your 
life  !"  yelled  out  Carlo,  when  Tomlin  let  him 
get  up  off  some  broken  flower -pots  on  the 
drill-ground.  "I'll  never  forget  it ;  I'll  get 
my  father  to  make  old  Dunston  expel  you ; 
and  when  I'm  a  man  I'll  devote  all  my  time 
to  wrecking  your  vile  hat  business  and  ruin- 
1  180 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

ing  you  and  making  you  a  shivering,  starv- 
ing beggar  in  the  streets  !" 

"  Go  and  sneak,  I  should,"  said  Tomlin. 

And  blessed  if  Carlo  didn't !  He  tore 
straight  off  to  the  Doctor  just  as  he  was, 
in  his  licked  condition. 

That  much  I  heard  from  my  fag,  young 
Tomlin,  but  the  rest  I  saw  for  myself,  as  the 
Sixth  happened  to  be  before  the  Doctor 
in  his  study  when  Carlo  arrived.  He  was 
white  and  muddy,  and  slightly  bloody  and 
panting ;  he  looked  jolly  wicked,  and  his 
collar  had  carried  away  from  the  stud,  and 
his  trousers  were  torn  behind. 

"My  good  lad,  whatever  has  happened  ?" 
began  the  Doctor.  "Don't  say  you  have 
met  with  an  accident  ?  And  yet  your  ap- 
pearance— " 

"Nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  Carlo,  who 
soon  found  out  the  Doctor  had  a  weak  place 
for  him,  owing  to  his  being  a  lord's  son. 
"I've  been  frightfully  and  cruelly  mangled 
through  no  fault  of  my  own  ;  and  I  believe 
some  things  inside  me  are  broken  too." 

"  Sit  down,  sit  down,  my  unfortunate  lad," 
said  the  Doctor.  Then  he  rang  the  bell  and 
181 


The  Human  Boy 

told  the  bntler  to  bring  Viscount  Weston- 
leigh  a  glass  of  wine  at  once. 

"  It's  Tomlin  done  it,"  said  Carlo.  "  He 
came  np  behind  me,  and,  before  I  could  de- 
fend myself,  he  trampled  on  me  and  tried  to 
tear  me  limb  from  limb.  I'm  not  strong, 
and  I  may  die  of  it.  Anyway,  he  ought  to 
be  expelled,  and  I'll  write  to  my  father,  the 
earl,  about  it,  and  he'll  make  the  whole 
country-side  resound  if  Tomlin  isn't  sent 
away  and  his  character  ruined." 

"  Hush,  Westonleigh  !"  said  the  Doctor. 
"  Have  no  fear  that  justice  will  not  be  done, 
my  boy.  You  shall  yourself  accuse  Tomlin 
and  hear  what  he  may  have  to  say  in  de- 
fence." 

Then  Tomlin  was  sent  for,  and  in  about 
ten  minutes  came. 

"  Is  this  true,  boy  Tomlin  ?"  said  the 
Doctor,  putting  on  his  big  manner.  "  One 
glance  at  your  victim,"  he  continued,  "  fur- 
nishes a  more  conclusive  reply  to  my  ques- 
tion than  could  any  word  of  yours ;  never- 
theless, I  desire  to  hear  from  your  own  lips 
whether  Viscount  Westonleigh's  assertions 
are  true  or  not." 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

"  Don't  know  what  he's  asserted,  sir/'  said 
Tomlin,  which  was  a  smart  thing  for  a  kid 
to  say.  "If  he  said  I've  licked  him,  it's 
true,  sir." 

"  That  is  what  he  did  assert,  sir,  in  words 
chosen  with  greater  regard  for  my  feelings 
than  your  own.  And  are  you  aware,  George 
Tomlin,  that  you  have  '  licked '  one  who,  iu 
the  ordinary  course  of  nature,  and  subject  to 
the  will  of  an  all-just,  all-seeing  Providence, 
will  some  day  take  his  seat  in  the  House  of 
Lords  ?" 

"  I've  heard  him  say  he  will,  sir,"  an- 
swered Tomlin,  as  though  no  statement  of 
Carlo's  could  be  worth  believing. 

"  Don't  answer  in  that  offensive  tone, 
boy,"  answered  the  Doctor,  his  voice  rising 
to  the  pitch  that  always  went  before  a  flog- 
ging. "  If  your  stagnant  sense  of  right  can- 
not bring  a  blush  to  your  cheek  before  the 
spectacle  of  your  scandalous  achievement, 
it  will  be  necessary  for  me  —  for  me,  your 
head -master,  sir  —  to  quicken  the  blood  in 
your  veins  and  bring  a  blush  to  the  baser 
extremity  of  your  person.  Some  learn 
through  the  head,  George  Tomlin  ;  some 
183 


The  Human  Boy 

can  only  be  approached  through  the  hide ; 
and  with  the  latter  category  yon  have  long, 
unhappily,  chosen  to  throw  in  your  lot." 

Tomlin  said  nothing,  but  looked  at  Carlo. 

"Before  proceeding,  according  to  my 
custom,  I  shall  hear  both  sides  of  this 
question  —  audi  alteram  partem,  George 
Tomlin.  Now  say  what  you  have  to  say  ; 
explain  why  your  lamentable,  your  unholy, 
your  aboriginal  passions  led  you  to  fall  upon 
Viscount  Westonleigh  from  behind — to  take 
him  in  the  rear,  sir,  after  the  unmanly 
fashion  of  the  North  American  Indian  or 
other  primitive  savage." 

"  I  didn't  take  him  in  the  rear  at  all,  sir," 
said  Tomlin.  "  I  stood  right  up  to  him,  and 
he  said  he  wouldn't  fight  a  future  hatter." 

"A  very  proper  decision,  too,  sir  —  a 
natural  and  wise  decision,"  declared  the 
Doctor.  "Why  should  the  son  of  Lord  Go- 
lightly  imbue  his  hand  in  the  blood  of — I 
will  not  say  a  future  hatter,  for  I  yield  to 
no  man  in  my  respect  for  your  father,  Tom- 
lin, and  his  business  is  alike  honorable 
and  necessary  ;  but  why  should  he  fight 
anybody  ?" 

184 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

"If  he's  challenged  he's  got  to,  sir,  or 
else  take  a  licking." 

"No  flippancy,  sir  !"  thundered  the  Doc- 
tor again.  "Who  are  you  to  announce  the 
laws  which  govern  the  society  of  Merivale  ? 
Shall  it  be  possible  in  a  Christian  land,  at 
a  Christian  college  for  Christian  lads,  to  find 
infamous  boys  with  tigrine  instincts  parading 
the  fold  for  the  purpose  of  smiting  when 
and  where  they  will  ?  This,  sir,  is  the  very 
apotheosis  of  savagery  !" 

"I  didn't  do  it  for  nothing,  sir,"  said 
Tomlin.  "I'm  not  going  to  sneak,  of  course; 
but  I — I  licked  Carlo  for  a  jolly  good  reason, 
and  he  knows  what." 

"Don't  know  anything  of  the  sort,"  de- 
clared Carlo.  "You  flew  at  me  like  a  wolf 
from  behind." 

"  That's  a  good  one,"  answered  Tomlin. 

"  Anybody  can  see  you  did  from  the  state 
I'm  in,"  said  Carlo. 

"  You  two  boys,"  began  the  Doctor  again, 
"  though  you  know  it  not,  stand  here  before 
me  as  types  of  a  great  social  movement,  I 
may  even  say  upheaval.  In  the  democratic 
age  upon  which  we  are  now  entering,  we 
185 


The  Human  Boy 

shall  find  the  Tomlins  at  war  with  the  Wes- 
tonleighs ;  we  shall  find  the  Westonleighs 
disdaining  to  fight,  and  the  Tomlins  accord- 
ingly doing  what  pleases  them  in  their  own 
brutal  way.  Now,  here  I  find  myself  met 
with  statement  and  counter-statement.  The 
indictment  is  all  too  clear  against  you,  boy 
Tomlin,  for  even  the  glass  of  old  brown 
sherry  which  he  has  just  consumed  fails  to 
soothe  your  unfortunate  victim's  nerve- 
centres.  He  is  still  far  from  calm ;  his 
ganglions  are  yet  vibrating.  This  work  of 
destruction  was  yours.  You  do  not  deny 
it,  but  you  refuse  any  explanation,  making 
instead  a  vague  and  ambiguous  reference  to 
not  sneaking.  No  man  hates  the  tale-bearer 
more  than  your  head-master,  sir,  but  there 
are  occasions  when  the  school's  welfare  and 
the  protection  of  our  little  commonwealth 
make  it  absolutely  necessary  that  offences 
should  be  reported  to  the  ruler  of  that  com- 
monwealth. I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying 
that  Westonleigh  saw  the  present  incident 
in  this  light.  He  had  no  right  to  hush  up 
the  matter.  Whatever  his  private  instincts 
towards  mercy,  his  duty  to  his  companions 
186 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

and  to  me,  together  with  a  hereditary  sense 
of  justice  and  the  fearless  instincts  of  his 
race,  compelled  him  to  come  before  me  and 
report  the  presence  of  a  yoang  garroter  in 
our  midst.  I  select  the  word,  George  Tom- 
lin,  and  I  say  that,  having  regard  to  the 
perverted,  not  to  say  inverted,  sense  of  jus- 
tice and  honor  all  too  common  among  every 
community  of  boys,  Westonleigh's  act  was 
a  brave  act.  I  accept  his  statement  in  its 
entirety ;  consequently,  Tomlin,  you  may 
join  me  this  evening,  at  nine  o'clock,  after 
prayers." 

That  meant  a  flogging,  and  Tomlin  said, 
"Yes,  sir,"  and  hooked  it ;  but  the  wretch- 
ed Carlo  thought  he  was  going  to  hear  Tom- 
lin expelled.  He  burst  out  and  said  as  much, 
and  the  Doctor  started  as  if  a  serpent  had 
stung  him,  and  told  Carlo  to  control  the  in- 
stinct of  revenge  so  common  to  all  human 
nature,  and  explained  that  chaps  were  not 
expelled  for  trifles.  He  reminded  Carlo  that 
Tomlin  had  an  immortal  soul  like  himself, 
and  seemed  to  imply  that  being  expelled 
from  Merivale  would  ruin  a  chap's  future  in 
the  next  world  as  well  as  this  one.  Finally, 
187 


The  Human  Boy 

he  allowed  Carlo,  in  consideration  of  the 
dressing  he  had  got,  to  stop  in  the  play- 
ground that  afternoon  with  a  book.  So  the 
little  skunk  crept  off,  shattered  ganglions 
and  all,  pretending  to  walk  lame  ;  while  the 
Doctor,  evidently  much  bothered  altogeth- 
er, took  up  our  work  where  he  had  left  it. 

Tomlin  got  flogged  all  right,  and  there 
the  matter  ended,  excepting  that  a  lot  of 
fellows  sent  Carlo  to  Coventry  and  called 
him  "ant-fryer  "  from  that  day. 

Then,  within  three  weeks,  came  the  Doc- 
tor's howler,  Steggles  being  responsible. 
Steggles  is  a  bit  of  a  hound,  but  his  cun- 
ning is  wonderful.  As  for  the  Doctor,  he 
continued  making  much  of  Carlo  and  sit- 
ting on  Tomlin,  till  one  day,  going  into 
chapel,  he  unexpectedly  patted  Tomlin  on 
the  head.  Tomlin  was  rather  pleased,  be- 
cause he  thought  the  Doctor  was  relenting 
to  him ;  but  when  Steggles  heard  of  it  he 
said  : 

"Why,  you  fool,  he  thought  he  was  pat- 
ting Westonleigh  I" 

Then,  on  an  evening  when  Tomlin  was 
188 

/ 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

cooking  a  sausage  for  me  in  the  Sixth's 
class-room,  he  said  : 

"  Please,  I  should  like  to  speak  to  you,  if 
I  may." 

So  I  chucked  work,  and  told  him  to  say 
what  he  liked. 

"  It's  only  to  show  how  things  go  against 
a  chap,  no  matter  what  he  does/'  said  the 
kid.  "This  term  I  have  been  flogged  for 
licking  Carlo,  and  caned  three  times  since 
for  other  things,  which  were  more  bad  luck 
than  anything  else  ;  and  now  I'll  be  flogged 
again  to-morrow  for  absolute  certain." 

"Why?" 

"  Well,  it's  a  jolly  muddle.  You  know 
Steggles  ?" 

"  Yes,  you're  a  fool  to  go  about  with  him," 
I  said. 

"Perhaps  I  was.  Anyway,  Steggles  and 
me  made  a  plot  to  get  some  of  the  medlars 
from  the  tree  on  the  lawn,  and  we  minched 
out  after  dark  to  do  it.  They're  simply  al- 
lowed to  fall  and  rot  on  the  ground,  which 
is  a  waste  of  good  tuck,  Steggles  says.  We 
went  out  about  ten  o'clock  last  night,  past 
Browne's  study  window  ;  and  we  looked  in 
189 


The  Human  Boy 

from  the  shrubbery  to  see  the  window  open, 
and  soda-water  and  whiskey  and  pipes  on 
the  table ;  but  no  Browne,  strange  to  say. 
Then  we  sneaked  on,  and  Steggles  suddenly 
heard  something  and  got  funky,  but  I  kept 
him  going.  We  reached  the  tree  and  Steg- 
gles lighted  his  bull's-eye  lantern,  so  as 
to  collect  the  medlars,  when  suddenly  out 
from  behind  the  tree  itself  rushed  a  man. 
We  hooked  it  like  lightning,  naturally,  and 
I  never  saw  Steggles  go  at  such  a  pace  in 
my  life,  and  he  stuck  to  his  lantern,  too ; 
but  I  tripped  and  fell,  and  before  I  could 
get  up  the  man  had  collared  me.  If  you'll 
believe  it,  the  man  was  Browne  !  He  asked 
me  who  the  other  chap  was,  and  I  said  I 
couldn't  be  quite  sure ;  so  he  told  me  to 
go  back  to  bed,  which  I  did.  That  was 
last  night ;  and  the  one  medlar  we  had  time 
to  get  Steggles  had  eaten  before  I  got  back, 
which  shows  what  Steggles  is.  To-day 
Browne  will  tell  the  Doctor.  He  always 
chooses  the  evening  after  prayers,  so  that 
he  can  work  the  Doctor  up  with  his  stories 
and  get  a  chap  flogged  right  away  ;  because 
it  often  happens  when  Doctor  Dunston 
190 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

says  he'll  flog  a  chap  next  day  he  doesn't 
do  it." 

"  And  what  is  Steggles  going  to  do  ?" 

"He  says  he  is  watching  events.  He 
also  says  that  Browne  was  certainly  stealing 
the  Doctor's  medlars  himself,  and  really  we 
surprised  him,  not  he  us ;  but,  of  course, 
Steggles  says  it's  no  good  my  telling  the 
Doctor  that.  Steggles  also  says  that  he's 
got  an  idea  which  may  come  to  something. 
I  don't  know;  but  he's  a  very  cute  chap. 
I've  got  to  keep  out  of  the  way  after  prayers 
to-night,  and  Steggles  is  going  to  watch 
Browne.  He  won't  tell  me  his  plan.  I 
thought  once  that  perhaps  he  meant  giving 
himself  up  for  me,  and  I  asked  him,  and  he 
said  I  ought  to  know  him  better." 

Tomlin  then  cleared  out,  and  as  the 
Doctor  took  Slade  and  me  for  a  short  Greek 
lesson  every  evening  after  prayers,  because  of 
special  examinations,  I  had  the  good  luck  to 
see  the  end  of  the  business  that  very  night. 

We'd  just  got  to  work  by  the  Doctor's 

green -shaded  reading-lamp  when  Browne 

came  in  with  his  grovelling  way,  pretending 

he  was  awfully  sorry  for  having  to  round  on 

191 


The  Human  Boy 

Tomlin,  but  that  his  duty  gave  him  no 
option,  and  so  on. 

"  Last  night/'  he  said,  "  I  was  sitting  cor- 
recting exercises  in  my  study  when  I  fancied 
I  saw  a  form  steal  across  the  grass  outside. 
Thinking  some  vagabond  might  be  in  the 
grounds,  I  dashed  out  and  followed  as  quick- 
ly as  possible.  Presently  I  saw  a  light,  and 
noted  two  figures  under  the  medlar-tree. 
Fearing  they  might  be  plotting  against  the 
house,  I  went  straight  at  them,  and,  to  my 
astonishment,  saw  that  they  were  only  boys. 
One  darted  away,  and  I  failed  to  catch  him ; 
the  other,  I  much  regret  to  say,  was  Tomlin." 

That  is  how  Browne  put  the  affair. 

"  Tomlin  again  \"  exclaimed  the  Doctor. 
"Positively  that  boy's  behavior  passes  the 
bounds  of  endurance." 

"Yes,  taking  the  medlars  of  one  who  has 
always  treated  him  as  you  have.  I  couldn't 
trust  myself  to  speak  to  him.  He's  a  very 
disappointing  boy." 

"  He's  a  disgraceful,  degenerate,  disrepu- 
table boy !  I  can  forgive  much ;  but  the 
stealing  of  fruit — and  that  my  fruit !  Greedi- 
ness, immorality,  ingratitude  in  the  person 
192 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

of  one  outrageous  lad  !  I  thank  you,  Browne. 
Yours  was  a  zealous  act,  and  argued  courage 
of  high  order.  Oblige  me  by  sending  Tom- 
lin  hither  at  once.  There  shall  be  no  de- 
lay." 

Browne  hurried  off  to  find  the  wretched 
Tomlin;  and  Doctor  Dunston,  who  always 
had  to  work  up  his  feelings  before  flogging 
a  chap,  snorted  like  a  horse,  and  took  off  his 
glasses,  and  went  to  the  corner  behind  the 
book-case  where  canes  and  things  were  kept. 
He  seemed  to  forget  Slade  and  me,  so  we 
sat  tight  in  the  gloom  outside  the  radius  of 
light  thrown  by  the  green-shaded  lamp,  and 
waited  with  regret  to  see  Tomlin  catch  it. 
The  Doctor  talked  to  himself  as  he  brought 
out  a  birch  and  swished  it  through  the  air 
once  or  twice. 

"Upon  my  soul,"  he  said,  "Lord  Go- 
lightly's  son  was  right.  His  knowledge  of 
character  is  remarkable  in  so  young  a  lad. 
Tomlin  will  have  to  be  expelled;  Tomlin 
must  go ;  such  consistent,  such  inherent  de- 
pravity appears  ineradicable.  Pruning  is  of 
no  avail ;  the  branch  must  be  sacrificed.  My 
medlars  under  cover  of  darkness!  And  I 
n  193 


The  Human  Boy 

would  have  given  them  freely  had  he  but 
asked  !" 

He  evidently  wasn't  going  to  expel  Tom- 
lin  this  time,  but  he  meant  doing  all  he 
knew  with  the  birch;  and  as  Tomlin  was 
some  while  coming,  the  Doctor's  safety- 
valves  were  regularly  humming  before  he 
turned  up,  When  he  did  come  he  walked 
boldly  in ;  and  the  Doctor,  who  had  been 
striding  up  and  down  like  a  lion  at  the  Zoo, 
didn't  wait  for  any  remarks,  but  just  went 
straight  for  him,  seized  him  by  the  nape  of 
the  neck,  nipped  his  hand  round  his  back — 
in  a  way  he  did  very  neatly  from  long  prac- 
tice— and  began  to  administer  about  the  hot- 
test flogging  he'd  given  to  any  boy  in  his 
life. 

"So — you  —  add — the — eighth  —  com  — 
mand — ment — to — the — others — you — have 
— already  —  shattered  —  deplorable  —  boy  !" 
roared  the  Doctor,  giving  Tomlin  one  be- 
tween each  smack.  "  You — would — purloin 
— steal — rob — the  medlars — of  your  pre- 
ceptor. You  would  lead  others — to — share 
— your — sin.  You  would  bring — tears — of 
— grief — to— a — good — mother's — eyes!" 
194 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

Here  the  Doctor  stopped  a  moment  for 
breath,  but  he  still  held  on  to  Tornlin,  who, 
much  to  my  surprise,  wriggled  about  a  good 
deal.  In  fact,  he  shot  out  his  legs  over  and 
over  again  at  intervals,  like  a  grasshopper 
does  when  it  gets  into  the  water ;  and  when 
he  got  a  chance  he  yelled  back  at  the  Doctor: 

'"  It's  a  lie — a  filthy  lie  I"  he  shrieked  out. 
"  Beast — devil !  Let  me  go  !  Let  me  go  ! 
I  never  touched  your  rotten  old  medlars — 
oh  !— oh  !" 

Then  the  Doctor  went  off  again. 

"  Silence,  miserable  child  !  Cease  your 
blasphemies.  Falsehood  —  will — not — save 
— you — now  !" 

' '  I  never  touched  them,  I  tell  you,  you 
muddle-headed  old  beast!  You're  killing 
me,  and  my  father'll  imprison  you  for  life 
for  it.  I  wish  they  could  hang  you.  Ill- 
make  you  smart  for  this  if  you  only  live  till 
I  grow  up — devil !" 

But  the  Doctor  had  shot  his  bolt.  He 
gave  Tomlin  a  final  smack,  then  shook  him 
off  like  a  spider,  picked  up  his  mortar-board, 
which  had  fallen  off  in  the  struggle,  and  put 
the  birch  in  its  place. 

195 


The  Human  Boy 

"  Now  go,  and  don't  speak  another  word, 
or  I  shall  expel  yon,  wretched  lad  \" 

Meantime  Slade  and  I  were  fairly  on  the 
gasp,  for  from  the  time  that  Tomlin,  as  we 
thought,  had  called  the  Doctor  a  devil  we 
realized  the  truth.  Now  his  passion  nearly 
choked  him  ;  he  danced  with  pain  and  rage; 
only  when  the  Doctor  took  a  stride  towards 
him  he  opened  the  door  and  hooked  it. 

The  Doctor  puffed  and  grunted  like  a 
traction-engine  trying  to  get  up  a  hill. 

"  These  are  the  black  days  in  a  head-mas- 
ter's life,  Slade,"  he  said.  ' l That  misguided 
lad  thinks  that  I  enjoyed  administering  his 
punishment,  yet  both  mentally  and  physically 
the  operation  caused  me  far  greater  suffering 
than  it  brought  to  him.  I  am  wounded — 
wounded  to  the  heart  —  and  the  exertion 
causes  and  will  cause  me  much  discomfort 
for  hours  to  come,  owing  to  its  unusual 
severity.  I  may  say  that  not  for  ten  }^ears 
has  it  been  necessary  for  me  to  flog  a  boy  as 
I  have  just  flogged  George  Tomlin.  Now 
let  us  proceed." 

I  couldn't  have  broken  it  to  him,  but 
Slade  did.     He  said  : 

196 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

"Please,  sir,  it  wasn't  Tomlin." 

"Not  Tomlin— not  Tomlin  !  What  d'  you 
mean,  boy  ?  Who  was  it,  then  ?"  said  the 
Doctor,  his  eyebrows  going  up  on  to  his  fore- 
head, which  was  all  quite  dewy  from  the 
hard  work. 

"  It  was  young  Carlo — I  mean  Weston- 
leigh," said  Slade. 

"  Viscount  Westonleigh  !"  gasped  the 
Doctor,  his  mouth  dropping  right  open  in 
a  very  rum  way  by  itself,  if  you  understand 
me. 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Then  why  in  the  name  of  Heaven  didn't 
you  say  so  ?  How  dare  you  stand  there  and 
watch  me  commit  an  offence  against  law  and 
justice  ?  How  did  you  dare  to  watch  me 
ignorantly  torture  an  innocent  boy,  and  that 
boy —  Go  !  go  both  of  you — you,  Slade,  and 
you,  Butler,  also.  Go  instantly,  and  send 
Browne  and  Viscount  Westonleigh  to  me. 
Good  God  !  this  is  terrible — terrible  !" 

So  that  was  his  howler,  and  to  see  him  in 

his  chair  looking  so  old  and   haggard   and 

queer   was   rather   frightful.      He    seemed 

suddenly    struck    with    limpness,    and    his 

197 


The  Human  Boy 

hands  shook  like  anything,  and  so  did  his 
bald  head ;  and  he  puffed  as  if  he'd  been 
running  miles  ;  and  Slade  said  afterwards 
that  he  looked  jolly  frightened  too.  He  put 
his  face  in  his  hands  as  we  went  out,  and  we 
heard  him  say  something  about  Lord  Go- 
lightly  and  ruin,  and  universal  opprobrium 
on  his  gray  hairs,,  though  really  he  had  none 
worth  mentioning  ;  and  Slade  said  he  almost 
thought  the  Doctor  was  actually  going  to 
cry,  if  such  a  thing  could  be  possible. 

We  sent  Browne  off  to  him,  but  Carlo 
wasn't  to  be  found.  He'd  been  seen  yelling 
somewhere,  but  couldn't  be  traced.  What 
had  happened  was  this  :  Tomlin,  in  obedi- 
ence to  Steggles,  had  kept  rather  close  after 
prayers ;  in  fact,  he  had  spent  the  half-hour 
to  bed-time  in  a  cupboard  in  the  gymnasium, 
under  the  rubber  shoes.  So  Browne,  not 
finding  him,  had  told  the  first  boy  he  saw 
to  do  so ;  and  that  boy  happened  to  be 
Steggles,  who  had  been  at  his  heels  ever 
since  he  went  to  the  Doctor.  Steggles  is 
a  miserable,  unwholesome  thing,  but  his 
strategy  certainly  comes  off.  Once  having 
the  message,  all  was  easy,  because  Steggles 
198 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

merely  found  Carlo,  and  told  him  the  Doctor 
wanted  him.  The  result  was  much  better 
than  even  Steggles  hoped  ;  because,  though 
the  Doctor  generally  fell  on  a  chap  who 
came  to  be  flogged  straightaway,  like  he  did 
on  Carlo,  it  wasn't  often  anybody  got  such 
a  frightful  strong  dose  as  Carlo  had.  After- 
wards, when  taxed,  Steggles  swore,  of  course, 
that  he  thought  he  was  talking  to  Tomlin. 
Seeing  the  likeness,  this  might  have  been 
perfectly  true,  though  in  their  secret  hearts 
everybody  knew  Steggles  too  jolly  well  to 
really  believe  it. 

Carlo  didn't  turn  up,  and  after  an  hour 
or  more  of  frantic  rushing  about,  somebody 
said  perhaps  he'd  jumped  down  the  garden 
well  owing  to  the  indignity  of  what  he'd 
got.  But  soon  afterwards,  in  reply  to  a 
special  telegram  sent  for  the  Doctor  by  the 
people  at  the  railway  station,  an  answer 
came  from  Golightly  Towers,  twenty  miles 
off,  where  the  purple-veined  lord,  father  of 
Carlo,  hung  out.  The  kid,  it  seemed,  had 
sloped  down  to  Merivale  railway  station  after 
his  licking,  and  taken  a  ticket  right  away  for 
Golightly,  and  gone  home  by  the  last  train 
199 


The  Human  Boy 

but  one  that  night.  He  never  returned 
either,  but  next  day  his  father  dropped  in 
on  Doctor  Dunston,  and  Fowle  managed  to 
hear  a  little  of  what  went  on  through  the 
key-hole.  He  said  that  as  far  as  he  could 
make  out  the  lord  didn't  think  much  of  the 
matter,  and  said  one  thrashing  more  or  less 
wouldn't  mar  Carlo.  But  the  lord's  wife, 
who  didn't  come,  evidently  took  the  same 
view  as  Carlo,  for  he  never  returned  to 
Dunston's  again.  The  Doctor's  howler  ended 
in  his  losing  the  little  bounder  altogether, 
which,  with  his  views  about  lords  in  general, 
and  especially  earls,  must  have  been  fright- 
fully rough  on  him. 

As  to  Tomlin,  actually  the  Doctor  never 
flogged  him  after  all!  I  think  his  spirit  had 
got  a  bit  broken,  and  though  Tomlin  went 
at  the  end  of  the  term,  he  wasn't  expelled, 
but  withdrawn  by  mutual  consent,  like  you 
hear  of  things  in  Parliament  sometimes. 
He  wouldn't  have  gone  at  all,  but  he  re- 
fused to  say  who  was  under  the  medlar- 
tree  with  him,  and  stuck  to  it  ;  and  Steg- 
gles  absolutely  declined  to  give  himself  up, 
because,  as  he  truly  said,  he  had  more  than 
200 


Doctor  Dunston's  Howler 

kept  his  promise  to  Tomlin  about  helping 
him  out  of  the  mess. 

So  Tomlin  went.  He  was  a  very  decent 
little  chap  indeed,  and  nearly  all  the  fellows 
at  Dunston's promised  faithfully  to  buy  their 
hats  entirely  at  his  place  in  Bond  Street, 
London,  when  they  left  school ;  which  will 
be  very  good  business  for  him  if  they  do. 
As  for  the  Doctor,  it's  a  peculiar  fact  that 
for  a  whole  term  after  Carlo's  affair  he  never 
flogged  a  single  chap,  He  didn't  seem  to 
have  any  heart  in  him,  somehow,  owing  to 
the  rum  way  the  howler  told  upon  his  spirit. 
201 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

OF  course,  as  Steggles  said  truly,  the  rum- 
mest  thing  about  the  whole  story  of  Mor- 
rant's half-sov.  was  that  he  should  have  one. 
Morrant,  in  fact,  never  got  any  pocket-money 
in  his  life,  owing  to  his  father  being  a  gentle- 
man farmer.  Not  that  he  had  nothing.  On 
the  contrary,  his  hampers  were  certainly  the 
best,  except  Fowle's,  that  ever  came  to  Dun- 
ston's,  both  for  variety  and  size  and  fruit. 
The  farming  business,  Morrant  said,  was  all 
right  from  his  point  of  view  in  the  holidays, 
as  the  ferreting,  both  rats  and  rabbits,  was 
good  enough  for  anything,  and  three  packs 
of  hounds  met  within  walking  distance  of  his 
farm,  one  pack  being  harriers,  which  Morrant, 
by  knowing  the  country  well,  could  run  with 
to  a  certain  extent  while  they  hunted.  But 
Morrant's  father  was  so  worried  about  chemi- 
cal manures  and  other  farming  things,  in- 
202 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

eluding  the  price  of  wheat,  that  he  didn't  see 
his  way  to  giving  Morrant  any  pocket-money. 
He  explained  to  Morrant  once  that  he  was 
putting  every  halfpenny  he  could  spare  into 
Morrant's  education,  so  as  to  save  him  from 
having  to  become  a  gentleman  farmer  too 
when  he  grew  up. 

But  Morrant  didn't  get  a  farthing  in  a 
general  way ;  so  when  there  arrived  a  ham- 
per with  an  envelope  in  it,  and  in  the  enve- 
lope a  bit  of  paper,  and  in  the  paper  a  half- 
sovereign,  Morrant  was  naturally  extremely 
surprised  and  also  pleased.  It  came  from 
his  godfather,  who  had  never  taken  any  no- 
tice of  Morrant  for  thirteen  years,  though  he 
was  a  clergyman.  But  the  previous  term  Mor- 
rant had  got  a  prize  for  Scripture  history, 
and  when  that  came  to  his  godfather's  ears, 
through  Morrant's  mother  mentioning  it  in 
a  letter,  he  wrote  and  said  it  was  good  news, 
and  very  unexpected.  So  he  sent  the  money ; 
and  really  Morrant  was  quite  bewildered  with 
it,  being  so  utterly  unaccustomed  to  tin  even 
in  the  meanest  shape. 

He  had  a  friend  by  the  name  of  Ferrars, 
who  was  much  more  religious  than  Morrant 
303 


The  Human  Boy 

himself,  and  knew  even  more  Scripture  his- 
tory ;  and  as  a  first  go-off  he  asked  Ferrars 
what  he  ought  to  do  with  the  money.  And 
Ferrars  said  that  before  everything  Morrant 
ought  to  give  a  tithe  to  charity.  But  when 
it  was  explained  to  Morrant  that  this  meant 
chucking  away  a  shilling  on  the  poor,  he 
didn't  take  to  the  idea  an  atom.  He  said 
his  father  had  set  him  against  giving  tithes, 
not  believing  in  them  very  much. 

So  Morrant  went  to  Gideon,  who  knew 
much  more  about  money  than  Ferrars,  and 
he  said  on  no  account  to  give  a  penny  away 
in  charity,  because  Morrant  wasn't  up  in  the 
subject,  and  might  do  more  harm  than  good. 
He  also  said  that  in  the  case  of  a  chap  who 
had  never  had  a  half-sovereign  in  his  life 
before,  it  was  a  great  question  whether  he 
could  be  expected  to  give  away  any ;  and 
Morrant  said  there  was  no  question  about  it 
at  all,  because  he  wasn't  going  to.  And  it 
made  even  a  difference  in  his  feeling  towards 
Ferrars,  for,  as  he  very  truly  said,  a  chap 
who  advised  him  like  Ferrars  had  couldn't 
be  much  of  a  friend. 

Having  decided  to  keep  it,  the  point  was 
204 


Morrant's  Half-Sev. 

what  to  do  with  it.  The  novelty  of  the 
thing  staggered  him,  and,  knowing  he  would 
probably  never  have  another  half-sovereign 
till  he  grew  up,  Morrant  felt  the  awful  im- 
portance of  spending  it  right,  because  an 
affair  once  bought  could  never  be  replaced 
if  lost.  And,  as  Bray  said,  ' i  If  you  get  used 
to  a  thing,  like  a  watch-chain  or  a  tie-ring, 
and  then  lose  it,  the  feeling  you  get  is  much 
worse  than  if  you  had  never  had  it  at  all." 

I  thought  about  it  too  for  Morrant,  as  he 
once  sent  me  a  brace  of  rabbits  by  post,  shot 
by  himself  in  the  holidays.  I  pointed  out 
to  him  that  half  a  sovereign  was  a  most 
difficult  sum  really,  being,  as  it  were,  not 
small  and  not  exactly  huge,  and  yet  too 
much  to  make  light  of,  especially  in  Mor- 
rant's case.  If  he  had  got  a  sovereign,  for 
instance,  he  might  have  bought  a  silver 
watch-chain  to  take  the  place  of  one  which 
he  had.  It  was  made  of  the  hair  of  his 
grandmother  when  she  was  young,  and  Mor- 
rant didn't  much  like  it,  and  had  often  tried 
to  sell  it  and  failed.  But  ten  bob  wouldn't 
buy  a  silver  chain  worth  having.  Morrant 
had  an  idea  about  braces,  and  of  course  he 
205 


The  Human  Boy 

might  have  bought  such  braces  for  the 
money  as  would  have  been  seldom  seen  and 
very  remarkable ;  but  braces  are  a  poor 
thing  to  put  good  money  into,  and  I  dis- 
suaded him. 

There  came  a  change  in  Morrant  after  he 
had  had  the  half-sovereign  for  four  days  and 
not  thought  of  anything  to  buy.  He  began 
to  worry,  because  time  was  going  on  and 
nothing  being  done.  Fellows  gave  him 
many  ideas,  some  of  which  he  took  for  an 
hour  or  two,  but  always  abandoned  after  a 
while.  Murray  told  him  of  a  wonderful  box 
of  new  conjuring  tricks  which  was  to  be 
had,  and  he  nearly  bought  it,  but  luckily 
remembered  just  in  time  that  the  new  tricks 
would  get  old  after  a  while,  and  some  might 
be  guessed  and  would  become  useless.  Then 
Parkinson  had  a  remarkably  swagger  paint- 
box, and  knew  where  Morrant  could  get  an- 
other with  only  three  paints  less  for  ten 
shillings.  And  Morrant  as  near  as  a  toucher 
bought  that,  but  happened  to  remember  he 
couldn't  paint,  and  didn't  care  in  the  least 
about  trying  to.  Corkey  minimus  said  he 
would  run  the  risk  and  sell  Corkey  minor's 
206 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

bat  to  Morrant  for  ten  bob,  the  bat  having 
cost  twelve.  The  bat  was  spliced  and  Corkey 
minor  was  in  Australia,  having,  luckily  for 
him,  sailed  to  sea  just  before  an  exam.,  owing 
to  a  weak  lung.  If  Morrant  had  played 
cricket  he  would  certainly  have  bought  the 
bat;  but  there  again,  even  though  Gideon 
told  him  he  might  easily  get  ten-and-six  or 
eleven  shillings  for  the  bat  next  term,  he 
hesitated,  and  finally  Gideon  bought  the  bat 
himself — as  an  investment,  he  said. 

Well,  there  was  Morrant  stuck  with  his 
tin.  He  wouldn't  even  change  it,  because 
Gideon  warned  him  against  that,  and  told 
him  his  father  knew  men  who  had  made 
large  fortunes  simply  by  not  changing  gold 
when  they  had  it.  Gideon  said  there  was 
nothing  like  never  changing  gold  ;  so  Mor- 
rant didn't,  only  of  course  there  was  no  good 
in  keeping  the  money  specially  stitched  into 
a  private  and  unknown  part  of  his  trousers, 
as  he  did,  for  safety. 

That  half-sovereign  acted  like  a  regular 
cloud  on  Morrant's  mind ;  and  then  came  an 
extraordinary  day  when  it  acted  more  like  a 
cloud  than  ever,  owing  to  its  disappearing. 
207 


The  Human  Boy 

Morrant  had  sewn  it,  with  a  needle  and 
thread  borrowed  from  the  housekeeper,  into 
a  spot  at  the  bottom  of  his  left  tronser- 
pocket,  and  from  this  spot  it  mysteriously 
vanished  in  the  space  of  two  hours  and  a 
half.  He  had  changed  in  the  dormitory  for 
"  footer/'  and  left  his  trousers  on  his  bed  at 
three  o'clock,  returning  to  them  at  4.45. 
Then,  naturally  feeling  for  his  half-sov- 
ereign, he  missed  it  altogether,  and  when 
he  examined  the  spot  he  found  his  money 
had  been  cut  out  of  the  bottom  of  the  pocket 
with  a  knife. 

Very  wisely  Morrant,  seeing  what  a  tre- 
mendous thing  had  happened,  did  not  make 
a  lot  of  row,  but  just  told  about  ten  chaps 
and  no  more.  I  was  one.  My  name  is  Newnes. 
I  said : 

"The  first  question  is,  Who  knew  your 
secret  hiding-place  ?"  and  Butler  said  it  was 
a  very  good  question  and  showed  sense  in 
me.     Butler  is,  of  course,  high  in  the  Sixth. 

Morrant,  on  thinking  it  over,  decided  that 

three  chaps,  or  four  at  the  outside,  knew  his 

hiding-place.     They  were  Ferrars,  Gideon, 

Fowle,  and,  Morrant  thought,  Phipps.     So 

208 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

first  Butler,  who  very  kindly  undertook  the 
affair  for  Morrant,  had  Phipps  brought  up. 
Phipps  stammers  even  when  most  calm  and 
collected,  and,  being  sent  for  by  Butler, 
caused  him  so  much  excitement  that  Butler 
made  him  write  down  the  answers  to  his 
questions,  and  even  then  Phipps  lost  his 
nerve  so  that  he  spelled  "  yes"  with  two  s's. 
But  he  solemnly  put  down  and  signed  that 
Morrant  had  never  told  him  where  he  kept 
his  half-sovereign ;  and  after  he  had  gone 
Morrant  said  that,  now  he  came  to  think 
about  it,  he  felt  sure  Phipps  was  right. 
Which  reduced  the  matter  to  Ferrars,  Gid- 
eon, and  Fowle  ;  and  the  first  two  were  set 
aside  by  Morrant  because  Ferrars  was,  of 
course,  his  personal  friend,  despite  the  pass- 
ing coldness  about  Ferrars'  advice,  and  Gid- 
eon, though  very  keen  about  money  and  a 
great  judge  of  it,  was  known  to  be  absolutely 
straight,  and  had  never  so  much  as  choused 
a  kid  out  of  a  marble. 

Butler  said  : 

"  That  leaves  Fowle  ;    and   if  you  told 
Fowle  you  were  a  little  fool." 

And  Morrant  said : 
o  209 


The  Human  Boy 

"  We  were  both  Roman  Catholics  by  re- 
ligion, and  that  makes  a  great  tie  ;  and 
though  many  chaps  hate  Fowle  pretty 
frightfully,  Fve  never  known  him  try  to 
score  off  me,  except  once,  when  he  failed 
and  apologized." 

And  Butler  said  : 

"  That's  all  right,  I  dare  say  ;  but  he's  a 
little  beast  and  a  cur,  and  also  a  sneak  of  the 
deadliest  dye.  I  don't  say  he's  taken  the 
money,  because  that's  a  libel,  and  he  might, 
I  believe,  go  to  law  against  me  ;  but  I  do 
say  that  only  one  out  of  three  people  could 
have  taken  it,  and  we  know  two  didn't, 
therefore  Q.E.D.  the  other  must  have." 

Morrant  didn't  follow  this  very  clever 
reasoning  on  the  part  of  Butler.  He  only 
thought  that  Fowle,  being  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic, would  never  rob  another ;  and  Butler 
said  he  would,  because  it  wasn't  like  Free- 
masons, who  wouldn't  score  off  one  another 
for  the  world.  He  explained  that  history 
was  simply  choked  up  with  examples  of  Ro- 
man Catholics  scoring  off  one  another. 

Butler  said  : 

"  Religion's  quite  different.  One  Buddhist 
210 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

is  often  known  to  have  done  another  Buddhist 
in  the  eye,  so  why  shouldn't  one  Koman  do 
another  ?  In  fact,  they  have  thousands  of 
times,  as  you'll  know  when  you  come  to 
read  a  little  history  and  hear  about  the 
Spanish  Inquisition.  Especially  this  may 
have  happened  seeing  that  Fowle  is  the  chap. 
I  tell  you  candidly  that,  in  my  opinion,  after 
a  good  deal  of  experience  of  fellows  in  gen- 
eral, I  take  Fowle  to  be  the  most  likely  boy 
in  Merivale  to  have  done  it ;  and  knowing 
him  to  have  had  the  secret  of  the  private 
pocket  reduces  it  to  a  certainty  in  my  mind. 
Tax  him  with  it  suddenly  in  the  night,  and 
you'll  see." 

Morrant  slept  in  the  same  dormitory  with 
Fowle,  and  that  night  the  whole  room  was 
woke  up  at  some  very,  late  hour  by  the  sound 
of  Morrant  taxing  Fowle.  Fowle  took  a  long 
time  to  realize  what  was  being  said,  and  when 
he  was  awake  enough  to  realize  what  Mor- 
rant was  getting  at,  he  showed  tremendous 
indignation,  and  asked  what  he  had  ever  done 
that  such  a  charge  should  be  brought  against 
him,  especially  at  such  a  time.  He  reminded 
Morrant  that  they  were  of  the  same  way  of 
211 


The  Human  Boy 

thinking  in  holy  affairs,  and  said  he  was  ex- 
tremely sick  with  Morrant,  and  thought  Mor- 
rant's  religion  must  be  pretty  rocky  if  it 
allowed  him  to  wake  a  chap  up  in  the  night 
and  charge  him  with  such  a  crime.  In  fact, 
Fowle  went  on  so  that  Morrant  finally  apolo- 
gized rather  humbly. 

From  that  day  forward  began  the  extraor- 
dinary disappearance  of  coin  in  general  at 
Dunston's.  Shillings  constantly  went,  and 
also  half-crowns.  Gideon  got  very  excited 
about  it,  and  said  watches  must  be  kept  and 
traps  set.  There  was  evidently  a  big  robbery 
going  on,  and  Gideon  said  if  the  chaps 
weren't  smart  enough  to  catch  the  thief 
they  deserved  to  lose  their  tin.  Certainly 
he  never  lost  a  penny  himself.  But,  despite 
tremendous  precautions,  money  kept  going 
in  small  sums.  Ferrars  was  set  to  watch  in 
the  pavilion,  I  remember,  during  a  football 
match,  and  Morrant  himself,  and  even  But- 
ler once  or  twice,  also  watched.  Some  chaps 
thought  it  was  the  ground-man ;  but  as 
money  also  disappeared  at  school, that  showed 
it  couldn't  be  him.  And  then  there  was  a 
theory  that  it  might  be  a  charwoman  who 
212 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

came  from  Merivale  twice  a  week.  I  believe 
she  was  a  very  good  charwoman  of  her  kind, 
and  Ferrars,  who  is  great  about  helping  the 
poor  and  so  on,  told  me  she  was  a  very  de- 
serving woman  with  a  husband  at  home  who 
drank,  and  children  too  numerous  to  men- 
tion. Which  Gideon  remembered  against 
the  charwoman  when  the  money  began 
to  go,  and  it  turned  his  suspicion  towards 
her,  because,  as  he  said,  with  the  state  of 
her  home  affairs,  money  must  be  a  great 
temptation.  So  a  watch  was  set  on  her,  and 
a  curious  thing  happened. 

Being  small,  I  can  get  into  a  boot  cup- 
board very  easily,  and  I  can  also  breathe 
anywhere  through  a  hole  bored  with  a 
gimlet.  This  was  done  to  the  door  of  the 
boot  cupboard,  and  two  other  rather  larger 
holes  were  also  made  for  my  eyes.  Mrs. 
G-ouger,  which  was  the  charwoman's  name, 
had  to  do  a  lot  of  work  in  this  room  —  a 
large  one  leading  out  of  the  gym.  And 
there,  on  a  certain  half -holiday,  I  was  watch- 
ing her. 

She  worked  jolly  hard  as  far  as  I  could 
say,  and  made  a  good  deal  of  dust,  and  a 
218 


The  Human  Boy 

curious  noise  through  her  teeth  when  she 
scrubbed,  which  I  thought  only  men  did 
when  they  washed  horses ;  but  there  was 
nothing  suspicious,  if  you  understand  me. 
She  didn't  touch  a  coat  or  anything,  though 
many  were  hanging  against  a  wall ;  and  the 
few  caps  about  she  merely  picked  up  and 
hung  on  the  pegs. 

Then,  just  before  she  finished,  who  should 
come  in  but  Ferrars,  and,  to  my  great 
astonishment,  Mrs.  Gouger  courtesied  to  him 
as  though  he  had  been  the  housekeeper  or 
the  Doctor. 

Ferrars  treated  her  with  great  loftiness,  and 
evidently  knew  all  about  her  private  affairs. 

He  said : 

"  And  how  is  the  child  that's  got  mumps  ?" 
and  she  said  it  was  better.  He  then  gave 
her  some  advice  about  her  husband,  which 
I  didn't  hear,  and  she  blessed  him  for  all 
his  goodness  to  her,  and  said  God  had  sent 
him  to  a  lone,  struggling  woman,  and  that 
he  would  reap  a  thousandfold  what  he  had 
sown.  All  of  which,  coming  from  Mrs. 
Gouger  to  Ferrars,  seemed  very  curious  to 
me.  Presently  he  said : 
214 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

"Well,  I  cannot  stop  longer.  Fm  glad 
the  child  is  better.  Keep  on  at  yonr  hus- 
band abont  the  pledge ;  and  here's  a  shil- 
ling." 

Then  Mrs.  Gouger  put  the  shilling  in  her 
pocket  and  blessed  him  again.  And  Ferrars 
went. 

That  very  day  young  Forrest  lost  a  shil- 
ling out  of  his  desk,  which  doesn't  lock, 
owing  to  Forrest  having  taken  the  lock  off 
to  sell  to  Meadowes  last  term. 

I  told  Butler  and  Gideon  what  I  had 
seen,  and  Butler  thought  it  rum,  and 
Gideon  said  there  was  more  in  it  than  met 
the  eye. 

Butler  said  : 

"Evidently  the  kid"  (Ferrars  is  a  kid 
from  Butler's  point  of  view)  "has  given  the 
charwoman  tin  before,  or  else  she  wouldn't 
have  blessed  him.  Now  the  question  is, 
How  much  pocket-money  does  Ferrars 
get  ?" 

And  I  said  : 

"A  shilling  a  week." 

"When  does  he  get  it?" 

"Mondays." 

215 


The  Human  Boy 

Butler  said,  "Ah!"  but  nothing  seemed 
to  strike  him,  and  Gideon  thought  that  Mrs. 
Gouger  ought  to  be  spoken  to.  This  Gideon 
undertook  to  do ;  and  the  next  week  he  did. 
What  happened  was  that  Mrs.  Gouger  said 
all  that  she  had  before  said  to  Ferrars  about 
her  husband  and  children,  but  added  that 
a  young  gentleman  with  a  most  Christian 
heart  had  lately  interested  himself  in  her 
misfortunes.  Gideon  asked  if  it  was  a 
Dnnston  chap,  and  Mrs.  Gouger  answered 
that  she  was  not  at  liberty  to  say.  She  seemed 
rather  defiant  about  it,  Gideon  thought, 
and,  in  fact,  when  he  pressed  her  for  the 
amount  the  chap  gave  her,  she  told  Gideon 
to  mind  his  own  business.  A  watch  was 
still  kept,  especially  on  Ferrars;  and  once 
Butler  did  an  awfully  cunning  thing  by  set- 
ting Ferrars  to  watch  and  setting  another 
chap  to  watch  Ferrars,  if  you  follow  what  I 
mean.  The  other  chap  was  Butler  himself, 
and  the  room  was  a  dormitory.  But  it  came 
out  rather  awkwardly  for  Butler,  because  he 
sneezed  at  the  very  start,  and  Ferrars  got 
out  from  under  the  bed  where  he  had  ar- 
ranged to  watch,  and  found  Butler  watching 
316 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

behind  a  coat  against  the  wall.  Then  they 
had  a  row,  because  Ferrars  evidently  thought 
Butler  was  there  to  watch  him ;  which  he 
was. 

The  end  of  the  affair  came  out  rather 
tame  in  its  way,  and  only  shows  what  awful- 
ly peculiar  ideas  some  chaps  have.  Gideon 
finally  spoke  to  Slade,  the  head  of  the  school, 
and  though  Slade  doesn't  like  Gideon,  owing 
to  his  way  of  making  money  by  usury,  yet  it 
was  such  a  serious  affair  that  he  listened  all 
through  and  promised  to  go  to  the  Doctor. 
Gideon  had  actually  kept  an  account  of  all 
the  money  stolen,  and  it  amounted  now  to 
the  tremendous  sum  of  four  pounds  five  shil- 
lings and  sixpence,  including  Morrant's  half- 
sovereign. 

Then,  after  Dr.  Dunston  knew,  we  heard 
one  day  from  Fowle  that  he  had  sent  for 
Mrs.  Gouger  to  his  study,  and  that  she  had 
been  there  fully  half  an  hour  and  come  out 
crying.  Fowle  had  listened  as  best  he  could 
till  the  Doctor's  butler  had  come  by  and  told 
him  to  hook  it ;  but  he  had  heard  nothing 
except  one  remark  in  the  voice  of  Mrs. 
Gouger,  and  that  remark  was,  "Four  pound 
217 


The  Human  Boy 

five  and  sixpence,  sir,  and  a  godsend  if  ever 
money  was." 

Gideon  said  her  mentioning  of  the  exact 
sum  was  a  very  ominous  thing  for  Ferrars. 
And  what  was  more  ominous  still  happened 
that  evening,  for  Ferrars  wasn't  at  prep,  or 
prayers. 

There  were  a  number  of  ideas  about  as  to 
what  it  all  meant,  and  Corkey  minimus,  who 
always  tries  to  get  among  chaps  bigger  than 
himself  and  say  clever  things,  came  out  with 
a  theory  that  Mrs.  Gouger  was  Ferrars's 
mother,  and  that  Ferrars  was  therefore 
stealing  and  making  the  money  over  to  her. 
But  Butler  merely  smacked  his  head  when 
he  heard  it,  and  told  Corkey  minimus  not  to 
be  a  little  ass. 

Gideon  was  the  only  chap  who  hadn't  any 
idea.  He  knew  Ferrars's  great  notions  about 
helping  the  poor  and  giving  tithes  to  parsons, 
and  so  on,  but  he  said  for  a  chap  to  steal 
money  and  hand  it  over  to  a  charwoman  in 
charity  was  contrary  to  human  nature.  All 
the  same,  if  a  thing  actually  happens,  it  can't 
be  contrary  to  human  nature.  Anyway,  after 
prayers  next  morning  the  Doctor  stopped 
218 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

the  school  in  chapel  and  explained  every- 
thing. 

He  said  : 

"  My  boys,  while  it  is  true  that  yon  come 
to  Merivale  to  be  instructed  by  me  and 
those  who  labor  here  among'  you  on  my 
behalf,  it  is  also  true  that  I  learn  occasion- 
ally from  those  whom  I  teach.  Indeed,  new 
problems  are  almost  as  often  set  by  you 
for  my  solution  as  by  me  for  yours,  and 
seldom  has  a  more  intricate  difficulty  con- 
fronted me  than  that  which  yesterday  chal- 
lenged my  attention.  There  has  recent- 
ly happened  among  us  a  mysterious  dis- 
appearance of  coins  of  the  realm.  Now 
a  shilling,  a  sixpence,  a  penny -piece,  if 
deposited  in  one  spot,  will  usually  remain 
there  until  removed  by  human  agency.  And 
the  human  agent  who  removes  money  which 
belongs  to  another  without  that  other's 
sanction  is  a  thief.  Boys,  briefly  there  has 
been  a  thief  among  you  —  a  thief  whose 
moral  obliquity  has  taken  such  an  extraor- 
dinary turn,  whose  views  of  rectitude  have 
become  so  distorted,  that  even  my  own  ex- 
perience of  school-boy  ethics  cannot  parallel 
219 


The  Human  Boy 

his  performance.  This  lad  has  looked 
around  him  upon  the  world,  and  found  in 
it,  as  we  all  must  find,  a  vast  amount  of 
suffering  and  privation,  of  honest  toil  and 
of  humble  heroism,  displayed  by  the  lowest 
among  us.  He  has  also  observed  that 
Providence  is  pleased  to  make  wide  distinc- 
tions between  the  rich  and  the  poor  ;  he  has 
noted  that  where  one  labors  for  daily  bread 
another  reaps  golden  harvests  without  the 
trouble  of  putting  in  the  sickle.  This  ex- 
traordinary boy  contrasted  the  position  of 
one  of  these  humble  workers  with  that  of 
those  among  whom  his  own  lot  was  thrown 
here,  and  he  found  that  whereas  that  ob- 
scure but  necessary  and  excellent  person, 
Mrs.  Gouger,  she  whose  duty  it  is  to  cleanse, 
scour,  and  otherwise  purify  the  disorder 
produced  by  our  assemblies  —  he  found,  I 
say,  that  whereas  Mrs.  Gouger  worked  ex- 
tremely hard  for  sums  not  considerable,  al- 
beit handsome  in  connection  with  the  nature 
of  her  labors,  others  of  the  human  family — 
yourselves — were  in  receipt  of  weekly  allow- 
ances of  varying  amounts  for  which  you 
toiled  not,  neither  did  you  spin. 
220 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

"This  unhappy  lad  allowed  his  mind  to 
brood  on  the  apparent  injustice  of  such  an 
arrangement,  and  instead  of  coming  to  his 
head-master  for  an  explanation  of  this  and 
other  problems  which  arose  to  puzzle  his 
immature  intelligence,  permitted  himself 
the  immoral,  the  scandalous,  the  disgraceful 
and  horribly  mistaken  course  of  righting  the 
balance  from  his  point  of  view.  This  could 
only  be  effected  by  defiance  of  those  divine 
laws  which  govern  all  properly  constituted 
bodies  of  human  society.  Ferrars — I  need 
not  conceal  his  name  any  longer  —  Ferrars 
broke  one  commandment  in  order  to  obey 
another.  His  fatuous  argument,  as  it  was 
elaborated  yesterday  to  me,  stands  based  on 
error  ;  his  crime  was  the  result  of  the  most 
complicated  ignorance  and  vicious  sophism 
it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to  discover  in  a  boy 
of  twelve.  He  did  evil  that  good  might 
come.  Ascertaining  from  the  inspired  Word 
that  '  charity  covereth  a  multitude  of  sins/ 
he  imagined  it  must  extend  to  cover  that 
forbidden  by  the  Eighth  Commandment. 
This  commandment  he  broke  no  less  than 
fourteen  times.  You  ask  with  horror  why. 
221 


The  Human  Boy 

That  the  domestic  affairs  of  Mrs.  Gonger 
might  be  ameliorated.  He  took  the  pocket- 
money  of  his  colleagues,  and  with  it  modified 
those  straits  into  which  poverty  and  conjugal 
difficulties  have  long  cast  Mrs.  Gouger.  It 
was  Ferrars's  unhappy,  and  I  may  say  un- 
paralleled, design  to  go  on  appropriating  the 
money  of  his  school-mates  until  a  sum  of  five 
pounds  had  been  raised  and  conveyed  to 
Mrs.  Gouger.  Of  this  total,  with  deplorable 
ingenuity,  he  had  already  subtracted  from 
various  pockets  the  sum  of  four  pounds  five 
shillings  and  sixpence  ;  it  was  his  intention 
to  continue  these  depredations  until  the  en- 
tire sum  had  been  collected.  But  the  end 
has  come.  The  facts  have  been  placed  be- 
fore me,  and  I  confess  to  you  that  perhaps 
never  have  I  been  confronted  with  a  problem 
more  peculiar.  After  a  lengthy  conversation 
with  those  who  support  me  here,  and  after 
placing  the  proposition  before  a  higher  tri- 
bunal than  any  which  earth  has  to  offer,  I 
have  come  to  a  curious  decision.  I  have  de- 
termined to  leave  the  fate  of  the  boy  Ferrars 
in  your  hands.  This  time  to-morrow  I  shall 
expect  Slade,  as  representing  the  school,  to 
222 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

inform  me  of  your  decision,  and  to-day,  con- 
trary to  custom,  will  be  a  half-holiday,  that 
the  school  may  debate  the  question  and  con- 
clude upon  it.  I  would  point  out  that  there 
is  no  middle  course  here,  in  my  opinion. 
Either  Ferrars  must  be  forgiven  after  a  pub- 
lic apology  to  the  establishment  he  has  out- 
raged, or  he  must  be  expelled.  As  for  the 
money,  if  those  who  have  lost  it  will  apply 
to  me  between  one  and  two  o'clock  to-day, 
each  shall  have  his  share  again." 

Well,  you  may  guess  what  a  jaw  there  was 
that  afternoon ;  and  finally,  after  hours  of 
talk,  Slade  decided  the  point  must  be  ar- 
ranged by  putting  papers  into  a  hat.  If  you 
drew  a  cross  on  the  paper  it  meant  that  you 
wanted  Ferrars  to  be  expelled ;  and  if  you 
drew  a  naught,  that  meant  he  was  to  be 
let  off.  You  were  not  bound  to  say  how 
you  voted,  and  the  excitement  when  the 
votes  were  counted  was  something  frightful. 
Ferrars  little  knew  what  was  going  on. 

At  last  the  numbers  were  read  out : 

For  expulsion    ....     124 

Against  expulsion  .     .     .     101 

223 


The  Human  Boy 

And  Slade  and  Bradwell  were  mad  when 
Slade  read  them,  and  said  that  Merivale 
was  disgraced.  But  Gideon  and  Butler 
and  Ashby  major  and  Trelawny  said  not, 
and  thought  it  wasn't  a  case  for  anything 
but  justice.  The  Doctor  made  no  remark 
when  he  heard  what  had  happened,  but  I 
heard  him  tell  the  new  master,  Thompson, 
a  day  afterwards  that  perhaps  the  Lower 
School  ought  not  to  have  been  allowed  to 
vote,  as  small  boys  would  merely  have  un- 
derstood that  Ferrars  had  stolen  money  and 
nothing  else.  Their  minds,  the  Doctor  said, 
were  not  big  enough  to  take  in  the  peculiar 
nature  of  the  case.  But  Thompson  said  he 
honestly  believed  the  school  was  perfectly 
right,  and  that  the  subtleties  of  the  case 
were  not  for  that  court ;  and  the  Doctor 
sighed  and  said  it  might  be  so. 

Anyway,  Ferrars  went.  We  never  saw 
him  again,  and  the  only  cheerful  thing 
about  the  end  of  it  was  that  Steggles  was 
badly  scored  off.  You  see  he  nipped  off  to 
the  Doctor  among  the  first,  and  said  Ferrars 
had  stolen  ten  shillings  from  him  too.  But 
it  happened  that  Ferrars  had  kept  the  most 
224 


Morrant's  Half-Sov. 

careful  account  of  all  the  money  he  had 
raised  for  Mrs.  Gouger  aril  the  people  he 
had  raised  it  from.  But  he  had  never  taken 
a  farthing  from  Steggles.  So  Steggles  was 
flogged  by  Mannering  in  his  best  form ; 
which  shows  that  things  which  are  fright- 
fully sad  in  themselves  often  produce  fine 
results  in  a  roundabout  sort  of  manner. 


The  Buckeneers 

OF  corse  even  a  kid  can  get  a  good  idea 
sometimes,  and  Maine,  who  I  was  fag- 
ging for,  said  afterwards  that  the  idea  was 
alright.  Whether  young  Bailey  or  me  thort 
of  it  first  I  don't  know,  but  Maine  lent  me  a 
book  about  coarseers  and  buckeneers  and 
such  like  people,  and  he  said  it  was  a  great 
life,  though  not  much  followed  in  present 
times.  He  was  no  good  for  a  coarseer  him- 
self, beoorse  the  sea  always  made  him  dred- 
fully  bad,  and,  besides,  he  was  going  to  be 
a  bushranger  some  day,  being  an  Australian 
and  well  up  in  it.  But  he  said  that  Drake 
and  Raleigh  and  many  other  men  in  our 
English  history  were  buckeneers  of  the  dedli- 
est  sort  and  had  made  England  what  it  was ; 
so  me  and  Bailey  thort  a  lot  about  it  and 
wished  a  good  deal  we  could  begin  that  sort 
of  life.     Bailey  said  that  in  the  books  he'd 


X 


The  Buckeneers 

read,  if  a  boy  began  young,  he  was  generally 
a  super  cargo  and  went  on  getting  grater 
and  grater  slowly ;  but  I  thort  boys  began  as 
cabin-boys  and  got  grater  very  quickly  by 
resquing  people.  But  Bailey  said  that  was 
only  in  books,  and  that  nobody  got  on  quick- 
ly at  sea  owing  to  the  compettitishun.  He 
did  not  much  think  there  were  any  bucke- 
neers left,  but  Maine  said  there  were,  cheefly 
off  the  coast  of  Africa,  and  that  daring  and 
dedly  deeds  were  done  in  the  Mediterranan 
to  this  day.  He  said  the  lawlessness  there 
was  awful,  and  that  nobodi  knew  what  went 
on  along  the  north  side  of  Africa  in  little 
bays  and  inletts  there  not  marked  on  maps. 

When  Bailey  herd  that,  he  took  more  in- 
terest in  it  and  wished  he  had  been  born  the 
son  of  a  pirit  insted  of  a  doctor,  because  he 
said  we  should  have  come  eesily  to  it  if  our 
fathers  had  been  in  that  corse  of  life ;.  but 
when  I  told  Maine,  he  sed  that  the  best  and 
most  splendid  pirits  had  had  to  overcome 
grate  dificultees  in  their  youth,  and  that  it 
was  the  pirit  who  began  as  a  meer  boy  at 
school  who  often  made  the  gratest  name. 

Bailey  sed  he  was  a  pirit  at  heart,  and  I 
227 


The  Human  Boy 

sed  I  was  to ;  but  not  untell  we  red  a  butiful 
book  by  Stevenson  could  we  see  any  way  to 
be  one  reelly.  Then  we  saw  that  we  mnst 
go  away  from  Merivale  in  secret — in  fact, 
we  must  fly  ;  and  Bailey  sed  it  would  have 
to  be  by  night  to  avoid  capture,  and  Maine 
sed  it  was  so.  But  it  was  a  tremendous 
thing  to  do,  and  I  asked  Bailey  about  his 
mother,  and  Bailey  sed  his  mother  would 
blub  a  good  deal  at  first,  but  she  would  live 
to  be  proud  of  him  when  his  name  was 
wringing  through  England.  And  I  felt  the 
same  in  a  way,  becorse,  though  I  have  got 
no  mother  to  blub,  I  have  got  an  uncle,  who 
is  my  gardian,  and  he  is  a  lawer  and  a  Oon- 
servitive  who  has  tried  to  get  into  Parley- 
ment  and  failed. 

Then  me  and  Bailey  talked  it  out  when 
chaps  were  asleep  in  our  dormitory,  and  the 
thing  was  what  we  should  reelly  and  truly 
be,  becorse  there  were  coarseers  and  bucke- 
neers  and  pirits,  and  they  all  had  their  own 
pekuliar  ways.  So  we  asked  Maine  which 
was  best,  and  he  sed  "  buckeneers."  He 
didn't  seem  to  know  exacktly  what  a  coar- 
seer  was;  but  he  told  us  all  about  pirits, and 
228 


The  Buckeneers 

he  sed  they  kill  womin  and  childrin,  and 
Bailey  said  he'd  rather  be  a  docter,  like  his 
father,  than  do  that,  and  I  said  the  same. 
But  a  buckeneer  is  very  diferent,  being  like 
Ealeigh  and  Drake;  and  a  buckeneer  may 
have  his  name  wringing  through  England, 
but  a  pirit  never  has,  being  rather  a  beast 
reelly.  Maine  sed  it  was  like  this :  a  pirit 
always  thinks  of  himself,  and  nobody  else ; 
but  the  best  sort  of  buckeneer  thinks  of  him- 
self, of  corse,  but  thinks  of  his  country  to ; 
and  after  he  has  replenished  his  coffers  he 
makes  his  soverein  a  present  of  islands,  and 
so  on,  which  are  gennerally  called  after  him, 
so  that  his  name  may  never  be  forgottun. 
And  Bailey  sed  that  was  the  sort  he  wanted 
to  be,  and  I  sed  so  to. 

We  thanked  Maine  a  good  deal,  and  he 
sed  it  was  a  big  idea  for  such  kids  as  us  to 
get,  and  hoped  we  were  made  of  the  right 
stuff,  and  promised  not  to  say  a  word  to  a 
soul.  And  we  finally  desided  to  try  it,  and 
Bailey  sed  we  must  have  a  plan  of  ackshun  ; 
so  we  made  one. 

He  said  we  must  run  away  and  work 
gradully  by  night  to  the  coast  and  go  to 
229 


The  Human  Boy 

Plymouth,  and  get  into  the  clocks,  and  find, 
a  ship  bound  for  the  north  coste  of  Africa. 
I  asked  him  what  next,  and  he  sed,  very 
truly,  that  that  was  enuff  to  begin  with,  and 
that  by  the  time  we  had  done  that  much 
manny  adventures  would  have  fallen  to  our 
lot,  and  we  might  alredy  be  in  the  way  to 
become  buckeneers.  And  I  sed  I  hoped  we 
should  make  f reends  at  sea ;  but  he  sed  the 
fewer  freends  we  made  the  better  buckeneers 
we  should  probbably  be,  because  it  is  not  a 
life  where  you  can  make  freends  safely.  In 
fact,  no  reel  buckeneer  would  trust  his  own 
brother  a  yard.  And  I  sed  that  we  must 
trust  one  annuther  at  any  rate.  And  Bailey 
sed,  as  far  as  that  went,  he  supposed  we 
must;  but  he  sed  it  relluctantly. 

The  thing  was  then  to  save  up  for  the 
diferent  weppons.  Maine  sed  we  shouldn't 
want  arms,  and  that  money  was  all  we 
should  require  till  we  got  down  south ;  but 
Bailey  felt  sure  we  must  at  leest  have  pis- 
tells,  becorse  in  books  the  man  armed  to  the 
teath  is  never  mollested  if  people  know,  but 
the  unarmed  man  often  looses  his  life  for 
want  of  a  weppon.  We  had  one  shilling 
230 


The  Buckeneers 

pocket-money  a  week  each,  and  Bailey  get- 
ting a  birthday,  very  fortunately,  made  a 
whole  pound  by  it  after  we  had  been  saving 
for  three  weeks.  So  between  us  we  suddinly 
had  one  pound  six  shillings,  and  Bailey  sed 
it  was  share  and  share  alike  for  the  present, 
and  always  would  be  unless  some  dedly 
hatred  sprang  up  between  us.  And  I  sed  it 
never  would  ;  but  he  sed  it  might,  and  if  it 
did,  it  would  probabbly  be  about  a  girl  if 
books  were  true.  And  I  larfed,  becorse  we 
both  have  a  grate  contemp  for  all  girls. 

Well,  things  went  alright,  and  on  a  half- 
holiday  we  managed  to  get  to  Merivale  and 
buy  pistells.  They  were  five  shillings  and 
sixpence  each,  and  the  man  didn't  seem  to 
much  like  selling  them;  but  we  got  them, 
and  amunition  —  fifty  rounds  each.  And 
Bailey  sed  that  would  be  enough.  Maine 
sed  they  were  very  good  pistells  for  close 
work,  but  advised  us  never  to  use  them 
unless  in  soar  straights.  And  we  sed  we 
wouldn't. 

It  was  the  day  of  the  menaggeree  at 
Merivale  that  me  and  Bailey  finally  took 
the  grate  step  of  going.  We  had  collected 
231 


The  Human  Boy 

a  lot  of  food,  and  studdied  geography  so 
as  to  get  to  Plymouth,  and  we  arranged 
that  we  should  travel  by  night  and  hide 
by  day  in  the  hart  of  impennetrable  woods, 
which  we  did.  After  the  menaggeree,  at  a 
certain  point  on  the  way  home,  we  slipped 
it  round  a  corner,  and  Thompson  didn't 
see  us,  and  in  a  breef  time  we  were  at  the 
edge  of  Merivale  Woods,  free. 

"  To  -  night,"  Bailey  sed,  "  we  will  get 
across  this  forest  and  do  eight  or  ten  miles 
along  the  high-road,  and  so  reach  Oakshott 
Woods  at  dawn.  They  are  on  the  edge 
of  the  moor  and  quite  impennetrable." 

So  we  got  well  into  Merivale  Woods  first 
and  made  a  lair  of  braken  under  a  fir-tree. 
And  we  cut  off  some  of  the  fir-tree  bark 
and  licked  the  sap,  which  is  very  nourish- 
ing and  feeding,  because  we  wanted  to  save 
our  food  as  much  as  possible.  But  we  had 
each  a  cold  sorsage  and  a  drink  of  water. 
And  then  night  came  on,  and  I  felt,  for 
the  first  time,  that  we  had  done  a  tremen- 
dous deed. 

"We're  fairly  started,"  I  sed  to  Bailey. 
"  It's  just  call  over  at  Merivale  now." 
232 


The  Buckeneers 

And  he  sed,  "Yes;  if  the  fellows  in  the 
upper  third  could  only  see  us  \" 
I  sed,  "It's  a  small  begenning." 
And  he   sed,  "  It  is ;    but   if   things    go 
rite,  and  we  are  made  of  the  propper  stuff 
for  buckeneers,  we'll  make  England  wring 
yet- 
Then  it  began  to  rain  rather  hard,   and 
I  found  that  a  wood  isn't  really  a  dry  place 
by  night  if  it  rains,  and  Bailey  lighted  a 
match,  and  sed  it  was  nearly  nine. 

"That'll  mean  ' lights  out'  at  Merivale," 
he  sed;  "  but  for  us  it  '11  mean  the  begenning 
of  the  night." 

I  sneazed  just  about  then,  becorse  water 
from  the  fir -tree  was  dropping  down  my 
neck  rather  fast,  and  Bailey  sed  if  I  was 
going  to  get  annything  the  matter  with  me 
I  had  better  go  back  at  once,  becorse  no 
buckeneer  ever  had  a  cold,  being  men  of 
steel  and  iron.  And  I  sed  a  sneaze  was 
nothing. 

Then  we  started  very  corsiously  through 

the  wood,  and  Bailey  cocked  his  pistell,  and 

I  asked  him  kindly  to  walk  in  front,  feeling 

a  curious  sensashun  when  he  walked  behind 

233 


The  Human  Boy 

me  with  his  pistell  cocked.  I  told  him,  and 
he  sed  it  was  fear,  but  I  sed  it  was  kaution. 

Sometimes  he  whispered,  "Cave!"  and 
we  sunk  down  and  got  fritefully  dripping 
in  the  wet,  but  nothing  happened,  and  we 
were  getting  well  on  through  the  wood  when 
Bailey  sed,  "  Cave  !"  again,  and  this  time, 
when  we  had  sunk  down,  we  distinkly  herd 
a  footstep,  and  Bailey  sed  it  was  our  first 
adventure,  and  I  sed  I  wished  it  had  come 
by  daylight,  becorse  it  wants  grate  practise 
to  face  adventures  in  the  dark  at  first. 

Anyway  the  noise  got  nearer  and  got 
louder,  and  Bailey  and  me  both  cocked  our 
pistells,  and  he  sed,  "Reserve  your  fire  to 
close  range,"  and  I  sed,  "Yes."  Then  he 
sed,  "I  see  the  thing.  It's  bigger  than 
a  beast  you  would  expect  in  an  English 
wood";  and  I  sed,  "I  have  got  a  sort  of 
fealing  it  is  something  out  of  the  men- 
aggerie";  and  he  sed,  "Then  it  will  be  a 
real  adventure,  and  I  wish  we  were  up 
trees." 

Bnt  it  was  to  late,  and  something  went 
quite  close.  I  sore  a  red  spark,  and  Bailey 
sed,  "Fire!"  which  we  did.  At  leest  my 
234 


The  Buckeneers 

pistell  went  off  with  fereful  effect;  but 
Bailey's  didn't,  and  he  sed  afterwards  that 
he'd  make  the  pistell  man  biterly  rew  the 
day  he  sold  him  a  treecherons  weppon. 

But  after  I  fired  we  herd  a  human  voice, 
and  it  sed,  "Hell!"  Then  it  sed  other 
fearful  words,  which  Bailey  sed  we  ought 
to  remember  because  they  were  buckeneer- 
ing  words  curiously  enuff.  And  then  the 
man  dashed  towards  us,  which  showed  I  had 
not  slain  him,  or  even  hit  him  in  a  vittle 
spot ;  and  we  fled,  and  soon  we  found  that 
we  had  distanced  him,  though  we  had  a 
squeek  for  it. 

"He  was  a  keeper," sed  Bailey,  "and  he 
will  think  we  were  poachers,  and  raise  a 
hue-and-cry.  We  must  keep  on  and  get 
into  Oakshott  Woods,  or  we  shall  very  likely 
have  to  yield  to  supereer  force." 

After  this  eksitement  I  got  a  curious  feel- 
ing in  my  stomach,  and  telling  Bailey,  he 
sed  it  was  either  hunger  or  fear.  And  I  sed 
it  was  hunger ;  but  Bailey  sed,  seeing  what 
a  hevy  meal  we  had  made  with  sorsage  and 
bred  and  turpentine  juice  only  two  hours 
before,  that  it  was  fear. 
235 


The  Human  Boy 

I  sed  if  he  thought  so  he'd  better  go  on 
without  me,  as  I  hadn't  taken  to  this  corse 
of  life  to  be  cheeked  by  him.  And  he  sed 
he  was  leeder  of  the  gang,  and  I  was  the 
gang,  and  the  first  thing  was  to  lern  to  obey 
orders.  And  then  I  got  rather  cross  with 
Bailey,  and  asked  him  who  he  thort  he  was 
to  give  me  orders,  and  reminded  him  my 
pistell  conld  go  off  anyway,  which  was  more 
than  his  could.  This  worried  him  a  good 
deal,  becorse,  of  course,  the  man  whose  pis- 
tell  went  off  had  the  best  of  it.  Then  he 
sed  that  it  was  no  good  having  a  quarrel 
between  ourselves  while  we  were  not  yet  out 
of  danger.  He  also  said  that  he  beleeved 
we  might  venture  to  take  one  hour's  sleep 
to  strengthen  us  before  getting  on  to  Oak- 
shott,  and  I  sed,  "Yes,"  but  thought  that 
one  of  us  ought  to  watch  while  the  other 
slept.  Bailey  said  he  would  watch  first,  and 
he  sed  also  that  we  might  get  to  the  wood- 
man's hut  in  the  middle  of  Merivale  Woods 
if  we  kept  on  past  a  ded  fir-tree  with  its 
stem  white,  becorse  all  the  bark  was  off, 
which  we  did,  becorse  the  moon  was  now 
shining  very  britely,  and  the  rain  had 
236 


The  Buckeneers 

stopped.  The  cold  was  also  friteful,  and 
my  teath  chattered  once  or  twice,  but  I 
broke  sticks  and  things  to  attract  Bailey, 
becorse  if  he  had  herd  my  teath  he  would 
have  sed  it  was  fear  again. 

Once  a  bough  jumped  back  and  hit  Bailey 
a  friteful  smack  in  the  face,  and  I  was  glad, 
and  he  sed  he  rather  thort  his  eye  was  done 
for ;  and  he  sed  it  didn't  much  matter  if  it 
was,  so  long  as  he  had  one  good  eye  to  see 
with,  becorse  most  buckeneers  lost  an  eye 
sooner  or  later,  though  generally  with  a 
stroak  from  a  cutlass. 

We  found  the  hut,  and  there  was  some 
dry  fern  in  it,  and  we  lighted  a  candle-end 
we  had,  and  took  off  our  boots,  and  wrung 
out  our  socks,  and  each  had  half  a  currant 
dumpling.  Then  Bailey  looked  at  his  watch 
and  sed  I  might  turn  in  "or  half  an  hour. 
Then  he  would  wake  me  and  turn  in  for 
half  an  hour  himself.  He  went  on  gard 
with  another  candle-end,  and  advised  me  to 
draw  my  pistell  and  sleep  with  it  cocked 
under  my  head.  But  I  sed  I  never  herd  of 
such  a  dangerous  thing  as  that  being  done, 
and  kept  my  pistell  reddy  cocked  near  my 
237 


The  Human  Boy 

hand.  I  didn't  fall  off  to  sleep,  as  I  ex- 
pected, owing  to  anxiaty  as  to  onr  fate,  but 
I  shut  my  eyes  and  thort  a  good  deal,  and 
after  my  eyes  had  been  shut  some  time  I 
opened  one  a  little  and  was  grately  surprised 
to  see  Bailey  coming  towards  me  steelthily. 
He  had  his  pistell  in  his  hand,  and  first  I 
had  a  horrible  thort  he  wanted  to  kill  me, 
so  that  he  mite  have  all  our  food  and  money ; 
and  then  I  felt  sure  he  was  coming  to  change 
pistells,  so  that  he  might  have  the  one  that 
went  off.  This  made  me  get  in  a  friteful 
wax  with  him,  becorse  I  saw  he  was  very 
unreliable  and  not  reely  as  much  of  a  chum 
as  I  had  thort.  So  I  waited  untill  I  saw  him 
stretch  out  his  hand  for  my  pistell,  and 
then  I  leapt  at  his  throat  in  a  very  fero- 
cious way,  that  much  surprized  him.  I 
also  sed  "  Hell !"  like  the  keeper  had. 

It  must  have  been  a  solumn  site  by  the 
lite  of  the  candle-end  when  we  began  to 
fight  tooth-and-nail  for  the  pistell  which 
could  go  off.  We  were  both  desperet,  and 
it  was  reelly  a  battle  to  deside  which  should 
be  the  leeder  of  the  enterprise  and  which 
should  be  merely  the  gang.  Then,  while  we 
238 


The  Buckeneers 

wresled  and  straned  every  nerve,  a  curious 
thing  happened,  for  we  fell  against  the  can- 
dle-end, stuck  on  the  top  of  a  stick,  and  the 
candle-end  fell  against  the  side  of  the  hut, 
and  the  hnt,  being  made  of  wood,  with  walls 
of  dried  heather,  was  very  inflameable  and 
cort  fire  almost  immediately. 

And  then  Bailey  sed  we  must  aggree  to 
settle  our  dispute  later  on  and  fli  at  once. 
So  we  each  took  our  own  pistell,  and  were 
just  going  to  leave  the  scene,  when,  to  our 
grate  horror,  we  herd  voices,  and  among 
them  the  voices  of  Browne  and  Mainwaring, 
who  were,  of  corse,  house-masters  at  Meri- 
vale. 

Exhorsted  though  we  were,  me  and  Bailey 
made  a  terrible  effort  to  escape,  and  I  think 
we  mite  h$&@  done  so  even  then,  but,  owe- 
ing  to  the  moon  and  two  other  men  who 
were  with  Mainwaring,  we  could  not  reach 
an  impennetrable  part  of  the  wood,  and 
finally  Mainwaring  cort  me,  and  a  man  cort 
Bailey,  and  they  dragged  us  into  the  light  of 
the  blazing  ruins  of  the  hut,  and  we  found 
out  that  Browne  and  Mainwaring  had  come 
after  us,  like  beestly  blood-hounds,  and  had 
239 


The  Human  Boy 

met  the  keeper,  who  told  them  he  had  been 
fired  upon,  and  then  the  unfortunate  burn- 
ing of  the  hut  had  directed  their  steps 
towards  us.  And  it's  a  lesson  in  a  way, 
showing  what  risks  it  is  for  buckeneers  to 
fall  out  among  themselves  at  kritikal  mo- 
ments. 

Of  corse  we  had  to  walk  back  merely 
as  prisoners  of  Mainwaring,  but  Bailey  told 
me  not  to  answer  questions  and  rather  let 
them  cut  our  tongues  out  than  know  the 
truth.  So  they  didn't  get  anything  out  of 
us,  and  when  we  got  back,  at  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  Dunston  was  up  to  meet  us ; 
and  by  that  time,  what  with  cold  and  bruises 
and  the  failure  of  the  skeem,  I  wasn't  equal 
to  defying  Dunston,  and  merely  sed  we 
wanted  to  change  our  corse  of  life  for  some- 
thing different,  and  had  started  to  do  so. 
And  I  also  sed  that  burning  the  hut  was  an 
axsident  which  might  have  happened  to  any- 
body.    And  Bailey  sed  the  same. 

Then  Doctor  Dunston  sent  for  the  matron, 

and  we  had  brandy  -  and  -  water  and  a  hot 

bath,  which  was  very  refreshing  to  me,  but 

Bailey  sed  biterly  when  he  was  in  it  that  he 

240 


The  Buckeneers 

had  thought  that  morning  never  to  have  had 
a  bath  again.  He  also  sed  we  should  be 
put  in  sepperate  bedrooms  that  night,  and 
that  if  either  of  us  got  an  opportunety  to 
eskape,  it  was  his  duty  to  reskue  the  other. 
But  I  sed  I  didn't  want  to  eskape,  being 
fritefully  sleepy  and  exhorsted,  and  I  sed 
that  if  he  eskaped  he  needn't  trubble  to 
reskue  me,  becorse  if  I  returned  again  to 
being  a  buckeneer  it  certinnly  wouldn't  be 
with  him. 

I  didn't  see  any  more  of  him  until  next 
day ;  then  we  were  taken  in  like  prisinners 
of  war  before  the  school,  and  Doctor  Dun- 
ston  lecktured  upon  us  as  if  we  were  beests 
of  pray,  and  he  sed  that  a  corse  of  falty  lit- 
eratuer  was  to  blame  for  our  running  away, 
and  sed  that  the  school  liberary  must  be  re- 
formed. But  he  never  knew  the  grate  truth, 
becorse  he  sed  we  were  onley  running  away 
to  sea  becorse  of  the  fascenation  of  the  ocean 
to  the  British  karacter,  when  reely  it  was  to 
be  buckeneers  and  the  terrer  of  the  Mediter- 
ranan. 

Maine  showed  us  all  the  points  we  had 
done  wrong  afterwards,  and  he  sed  the  way 
q  241 


The  Human  Boy 

we  had  fought  for  the  best  pistell  was  very 
interesting  to  him  and  a  grate  warning  not 
to  trust  in  your  fellow-creetures.  And,  after 
he  had  lecktured  upon  us,  Doctor  Dunston 
flogged  me  and  Bailey  in  publick,  which 
showed  the  stuff  we  were  made  of,  becorse, 
though  Bailey  gets  very  red  when  flogged, 
he  has  never  been  known  to  shedd  a  tear ; 
and  I  get  very  white,  curiously  enuff ;  but 
I  have  never  been  known  to  shedd  a  tear 
either. 

243 


THE   END 


